Germany to Impose Monthly Tax On Media Phones

Germany's 16 states have decided to levy a tax on personal computers and, more of a concern to us here, mobile phones capable of internet access that would allow them to access TV or radio station programming. For those readers that live outside of Europe and are not familiar with the situation, people in many European countries pay a fee for owning a radio or TV. The fees collected fund nationally owned television and radio stations. In the case of Germany, at least, even if you only possessed a single television that had no cable TV access and no antenna, that you used only for DVD playback or game console use, you would be required to pay the tax because your TV is "capable" of receiving TV signals.

Now that personal computers and mobile phones are gaining the same media abilities as their conventional house mates, the German states wish to impose the same 5.52EUR (US$6.94) monthly fee on them. That means potentially that a German citizen with a phone capable of viewing streaming video or radio would have to pay the monthly fee on top of any carrier based fees. The worst part is that the state fee would have to be paid even if they did not use their phone for such media services.

Considering that just about any smartphone on the market as well as many less powerful feature phones are already capable of mobile TV or radio in one form or another, millions of German mobile phone users could be affected.

[German readers are reporting that only private citizens that are not already paying the fee for a radio or TV will be affected. I am still looking for official confirmation on that, though. -editor]

German businesses would suffer even more, since each device in the company would be taxed, instead of the single tax that home users pay. A company with 100 employees with one computer and one media-capable phone each could end up being responsible for an additional 1104EUR per month in radio access fees.

The new fee structure is slated to start on January 1, 2007, but industry groups are strongly protesting the recent decision and are hoping to get it overturned.

 

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