[Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

The government ( er joke !) announced a 50p per month levy on fixed phone lines to pay for fibe optic broadband for the whole country

I guess we VM customers will be exempt as we already have fibre optic - well to the Green Box anyway

does anyone know if we are in fact exempt

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

loony labour at it again

im led to belive its a levy on copper lines ie BT

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

I understand the charge to be on fixed lines, so that includes Virgin Media as well.

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

This is something I'd been wondering about.

The levy is described as fixed lines which would include VM, but equally, why should VM be forced to either increase their customer prices or "competitively" absorb it (as the report referred to) just for the sake of funding the competitors network improvements?

For me personally, I'm on VOIP over VM broadband with no fixed line though :p:

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

The first thing I thought of was the mobile companies rubbing their hands with glee as more fixed line customers turning to pre pay or per month contracts.

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

will this include businesses and be a higher charge based on usage or ratable value as the cost of satellite tv is in pubs

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

Those people whove bundled TV & Broadband only will be laughing at the rest of us. People that have bundled TV & Phone only will be very annoyed, as my neigbours are. He and his wife are in their mid 70's and have no intention of having a computer, let alone having Broadband, yet they will have to pay it.

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

Don't understand why everyone's making such a fuss about it, it's 50p a month, that's just £6 a year, hardly breaking the bank is it?

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

untill it is no longer 50p

it won't take long for the gov to realise that 50p is no were near enough to raise the money needed

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

Well some would view giving 50p per month as just another tax, especially when they are already enjoying broadband.

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

Seeing as the money is to give people who don't already have access to fast broadband (or any broadband) a fast broadband connection, I doubt that the fact you are on Virgin makes any difference at all.

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

From what I've seen (not had a chance to read the full report yet), the recommendation was actually along the lines of "start off at £6 but if it's not enough increase it". What do you reckon the chances are of BT seeing if they can treat that as a blank cheque? Or am I just too cynical? :p:

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

not cynical at all ,i think that's exactly what will happen especialy given that the areas in question could only be supplied by bt realistically

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

Westminster could do with being brought into the 21st Century before we start worrying about the country folk.

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

Having a fixed line improves your credit worthy-ness with most banks

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

It now works out more to use the landline than my PAYG, eg 10 one min calls on landline £1.42 same on Asda PAYG 80p
and you dont pay the landline cost £11, so why should we pay more.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

I think you guess wrongly. The idea of a levy like this is to ensure a minimum level of service is available to everyone, regardless of the current availability of the service or how they currently use it. Providing that service is expensive - so expensive that it is not practical to force only those whose line needs upgrade work to pay for it. In the same way as everyone pays for schools, hospitals, roads and the BBC through a variety of taxes, licences and levies, regardless of whether they use those services or not, everyone will shoulder the cost of Britain's broadband upgrades.

edit

Look at it another way: if you were exempt because you're already on a super-fast cable network, wouldn't all those who already have fast ADSL also be exempt?

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

Where do you get that from? VOIP combined with the joys of number porting mean that providing a fixed line number (as I have on a VOIP only system at home) is no guarantee you're even based in the country, never mind stable.

I agree with the theory that it needs to be spread across the board to achieve it, but doing it and suggesting that companies should swallow the cost in competitive deals is a bit much. That is basically suggesting that Virgin should pony up a load of cash to support their competitors inferior network.

At the risk of opening another rather large can of worms, it becomes a bit like the TV license - only (currently) the BBC gets anything from it but you can't use any other channels without paying for it.

I'd almost rather they were honest about it, did it as a tax or charge similar to the TV license and kept it away from the ISPs having to deal with it. Applying it as a levy against fixed lines makes things easy for the government and (in general) shifts the cost of administering the whole lot on to the ISPs.

Hmm - the more I think about this the more I think VM are getting the short end of the stick here. VM absorbs tax cost to remain competitive, BT get faster super duper network, BT charge VM higher rates for the privilege of running Virgin.net ADSL over new super duper network...

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

... only if Virgin do opt to absorb the levy. The Government will naturally be keen for the phone companies to do this as it renders their tax on phone lines effectively invisible to voters. Personally I'd do as the airlines do, and make it very clear on the bill exactly what taxes are being levied and how much.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

True enough - I hope that they all do that. I can see BT pretending it's not there though as they can plan long term - spend a bit now to get people signed up on the basis of them subsidising them on the basis they can recoup the costs long term with the better network.

I seem to remember a while back, BT got the green light to charge more for these better services when they were available as a whole profitability thing/incentive to invest in them. I wonder if that will get revoked or not.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

if BT was a national company still owned by the goverment then i don't think id be as worried but its not its private company and all i can see is BT getting 100 of 1000s new customers through new upgraded lines that have been partly paid for from cable money and Virgin getting screwed (pardon the pun).

now if Virgin was to get a share of this money to upgrade and lay new cable then im all for it.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

In fairness, the government have not said who will get the money, or how it will be allocated. My guess is they'll put each area out to tender and the lowest bidder will get the contract to put in phone lines..

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

This money isn't to be used for general network-wide upgrades, so Virgin is not going to lose out due to BT getting all of it.

The issue here is the minimum level of universal service we as a nation can expect to get from the fixed-line telephone network operated by the former State monopoly, British Telecom. The now-privatized BT plc, having inherited an infrastructure built largely at the taxpayers' expense, has in return to provide a fixed line to anyone who wants one (I mean everyone, with few, if any exceptions), and that line has to be usable for both voice and data. The problem is, the current minimum acceptable data speed that BT is obliged to provide is, IIRC, a mere 28.8kbps. It's reasonably easy to do that, but now the Government wants to raise the minimum service level to 2mbps. That is impossible to achieve without serious investment in technology in the very places where it will be impossible to make a financial return on it (such as on my line, which is 4 miles from a rural exchange that has fewer than 200 properties connected to it). And BT is no longer a State monopoly whose losses simply get swallowed up in the chancellor's next budget report. It's a plc, and is obliged to make a profit.

The money that is raised with this levy will be spent on bringing the minimum data speed up to 2 meg on those lines that cannot already support it. In essence, a lot of money being spent in a few poorly-served, mostly rural locations around the UK. Your cash is going to upgrade my phone line. That may sound unfair, but it is simply what happens with every penny of tax you pay. It is spent where and when it's needed, and it is not needed anywhere on the Virgin network, as that network is already capable of far in excess of 2 meg.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

too rite its unfair if your not happy with your speed then u pay BT for your line to be upgraded why should we have to pay.
i dont see this as a goverment helping the have not's in the internet world i see it as the goverment finding another way of taxing us to pay for their bank bailout fiasco.
how is £6 a year from every house that has a fixed line going to help thats no where near enough plus if it was to be true the goverment wouldn't give the full £6 towards the fund they would prob give £4 of it to the fund.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

For the same reason as I could be paying to put your kids through school even after mine have left. Same reason as I'm paying for the man down the street to have false teeth fitted on the NHS. Collectively, as a nation, we decide that certain services are important enough for everyone to have access to them regardless of ability to pay. If you had to pay the entire cost of the services you use, as and when you use them, you would be faced with some very unpleasant bills.

The parts of the UK that do not already have 2 meg ADSL broadband, do not have it because it is very expensive to do in those parts. Thus, everyone pays something to subsidise the effort. There is nothing unusual or controversial about this.

Right. Some inspired political commentary there.

OK. Can we see your calculations please?

How do you know this?

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

Road Tax was original for the up keep of the roads!!!
Need I say more?

Just another thought, when the whole country have fibre optic broadband will they stop the tax?

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

This isn't going to give fibre-optic broadband to the whole country. It's mostly going to provide range-boosting equipment to make ADSL work on the long or poor quality lines where it currently either doesn't work, or provides sub-2meg speeds. It may also result in wireless solutions in some places.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

i get the feeling your all for this Chris

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

How did you get that impression? :D

It will be good for the economy. It will allow small home-grown businesses more freedom to start up in rural locations that could do with the boost and it will, in the long term, reduce the cost of delivering public services. A lot of government stuff is online now but they can't go for exclusive online delivery while a large minority of people are still unable to access it. A universal 2meg service will change all that.

I am on the end of a very long phone line myself but I can - usually - get slightly over 2 meg already. This allows me to work from home whenever it's appropriate. This is only the case because the Scottish Government paid BT to put broadband into my exchange. Prior to that I was on dial-up only, which was a real shock after moving from a house with TL cable broadband, I can tell you.

The availability of broadband at home has saved my employers lost productivity when weather has made commuting impossible and, in my most recent contract, has saved a small fortune in money and CO2 emissions as I have been able to work from home for more than a year now.

When this 50p levy results in booster equipment being installed on the lines up here, I hope to benefit from further speed increases, and people further up the line from me who currently don't get broadband at all will be able to get the same advantages I now have.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

in principle i agree with this levi but am deeply suspicious of the gov ,any gov ,in dealing with private companies to fulfill promises made to the voters
i can almost hear the companies who will carry out the work raising the cost of doing these works ,what cost X pounds last year will be alot more expensive post announcement ,for no good reason apart from the fact that the work has to done and the gov is going pay so it's blank cheque time
i would be alot more happy if the guv researched the cost properly i.e compared past prices to the quotes they will get
working with local authority housing regeneration as i do i am only to aware of how much prices shoot up as soon as government funding is mentioned
as long as the tax payer doesn't get fleeced by a load of suits with brown envelopes i am all for this scheme as it will drag the uk into the 21st century

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

I agree with the concept of a universal basic level of service and that as with the other services we take for granted (despite grumblings and complaints), some form of tax is the only way to achieve it. I'm just a bit suspicious about how that's going to be achieved at who's expense/profit.

Looking at agendas of the two key players involved...

We have uk.labour.gov - looking for a nice report to show they're forward thinking with current technologies and expectations and perhaps see this as a handy way to try and connect with the techno-youth and sway a few votes in next years election.

In the second corner, we have BT - the only company that is able to (obliged to as pointed out) provide service nation wide but doesn't want to spend the money themselves as it's not profitable. That said, I suspect that if the service was better they would see higher revenues from those areas so having somebody else pick up the tab is ideal.

Virgin meanwhile, who are in the process of upgrading their minimum service to 10 meg, will see bugger all (excuse my language) of this money for that reason (I'm sure BT will strongly object to the tax being used for expansion rather than upgrade to minimum level).

As already posted, nothing has been said about how the tax will be distributed but I'm extremely suspicous about it.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

As far as I am concerned, it's simply another way of taxing people by HMG - probably paying for more dubious on-demand films for certain "honourable" members...

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

The plot thickens !!

Leaked documents are suggesting the tax will be "per line" and not "per household" and will be VAT chargeable. The tax will also apply to the new generation fibre as well as copper lines.

Story in the TIMES

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

Having been with NTL/VM for a number of years and paying by my subs for VM's fibre network why should I have to subsidise BT's failure to modernise? I left BT because their Internet access from home was a joke.

BT have made vast profits in the past - where did they go?

If this goes ahead, I hope that VM get to keep all the levy they are forced to collect from their customers.

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

you wait until the crazy tories get in,(if they do) then you will see stupidity second to none :mad:

Re: 50p phone levey - not on Virgin phones ?
 

Exactly the same was said about the Air Passenger Duty - Airport departure tax which started out as only £5 per person.
With the delayed changes planned for next year - for long haul this goes up to £120.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

I.E. Another TV tax (sort of).

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

How can it be a TV tax?? It's only valid if you have a land line.. If you ust have for example VM TV then you won't pay the 50p a month

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

This levy is not, in any way, related to the 2Mbit USC. It's to increase availability of 'super fast' broadband services. VM and BT between them will offer the 'next generation' services to about 60% of the population, this tax is there to increase that to 90%.

Putting it another way it's highly likely this will do precisely nothing for you Chris, it being targetted at those semi-rural areas that aren't urban enough to have cable or be viable for BT's NGA upgrades and those rural areas close-ish to urban areas. ;)

Northern Ireland are doing some stuff. Chances are that last 10% will need to do it themselves with local authority support.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

Well this confuses things!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/11/broadband_tax/

Unused landlines will be taxed under government plans to subsidise rural broadband, and VAT will be charged on the new 50p per month tax.

"The duty will be payable on all local loops that are made available for use by an owner whether or not the lines are actually used," the Treasury said today.

"It will also be payable on all local loops regardless of whether the loop consists of a copper pair, a co-axial cable or a fibre connection."

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

Interesting ... that could mean people who have VM TV but a BT phone line get clobbered twice, seeing as VM makes the phone line available to the house as a standard part of the cable run from the street cab, even if the sub has never expressed any interest in using it. I can't believe that was what the Treasury intended. It looks to me as if all they're actually trying to do is to close off loopholes. Stand by for fireworks and further 'clarification'.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

Yes they have plenty of stuff to work on, however not having the VM phone line active is the same as not having the BT line active. It may run to your home but if you're not paying a line rental on it there'll be nothing to add a tax to.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

Consultation document does cover this point:

"3.7 There are some difficulties with this general approach due to how some retailers provide services to their customers. Virgin Media provide broadband services over a co-axial cable but standard voice services over a separate copper line where other providers would just use a single copper line for both voice and broadband services. BT will also face similar issues where fibre is overlaid on copper wires. Government’s intention is to ensure that there is no double liability under these circumstances."

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

But is that saying if you have a bit of wire connected to your house you will pay the tax or not?

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

The VM network uses twisted pair to a local multiplexer, the BT network uses twisted pair to an exchange then to a multiplexer. Both are the same just where the multiplexer is is different. The BT fibre to cabinet upgrade won't change that architecture at all, the only change will be where the copper is entirely replaced with fibre.

Nonces really simply need to get their act together and get this pathetic tax away from us, or simply charge it on all non-IP based land lines as a tariff to fixed line rental and stop wasting tax payers' time procrastinating over minor definitions.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

Why should we the customer have to pay money for the government to do there job, it might only be 50p, but when you think of what the MPs fiddle and the wages they are on. Also companies that want this new cable, that we are on now, should not enforce the price on us, it might only be 50p but then the government will think after about 12 months, oh we will put that 50p up to a 1.00. it is the principle of the thing.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

OoooOOoooo ... kudos for actually reading the consultation :tu: :D

In that case, I would imagine their intention is to tax installed lines which would work without the need for any activation, were you to plug a phone into the socket, even if those lines aren't every actually used...

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

let me get this rite i think iv'e read this wrong but if you have moved from BT to virgin and have all services from virgin you pay your 50p tax once but your old bt line is still attatched to the house the way i read it you pay 50p tax on that line too even though its not used.
if thats true in off out to cut the line down.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

What ever happens, its a rip off, we pay enough taxes as it is.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

Err no you leave that line alone, it's not yours to cut down and will cost you a lot of years of 50p a month to repair what is basically vandalism of BT's property.

To answer your question, no, if it's not in use you won't get charged for it. The charge goes to BT, not a person, and if you aren't using the circuit they aren't going to have a liability for it to pass on to you.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

from what i remember reading the 50p tax is not actually 50p.

Its 50p + VAT

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

That's not surprising - if it's levied on the service provider, rather than on the sub directly, the service provider will have to add it to the sub's bill in order to recoup the cost. At which point it would automatically attract VAT, along with everything else on the bill.

IIRC the Tories aren't mad keen on this scheme however, and as they're likely to be the Government in less than six months, it may be that nobody ever has to pay this levy.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

Chris i thought Labour was back in the lead in the polls.

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

Not in the slightest:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8280050.stm

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

Yet more tosh from our "free country"

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

i like to know how do they get this information for the polls

re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

The Tories favour letting the market sort itself out, and hopefully to support this idea they will remove some of the barriers to investment in next generation networks.

VAT is levied, this is a duty in a similar manner to excise duty. The supplier pays the government then either eats up the charge or, more likely, passes it to the subscriber at which point of course that charge becomes liable for VAT.

Re: BT Fibre To Cabinet Phases 4b / 5 Announced
 

Landline tax to be shelved:

http://money.uk.msn.com/budget2010/a...ntid=152937574

So who is going to pay for Rural broadband now then? If the government won't, and BT have announced they only intend to serve fast broadband to the cherry picked highly concentrated 40% of the population, then who else will, or is the rural population expected to receive a lower standard of services yet again? Rural areas are lucky to even have power, water and sewers!:erm:

Re: BT Fibre To Cabinet Phases 4b / 5 Announced
 

A fair few don't have mains sewage or gas yet have access to DSL, go figure.

No idea what Labour want to do now but this is a nice summary of the plans of other parties.

Have a look at this campaign, may give some ideas.

Re: [Update and merge] 50p landline tax shelved
 

Thread title updated, thread moved, stray posts from the wrong thread incorporated ...

... and as this is a nakedly party political issue, thread closed.

Please continue further discussion in the official general election thread for the time being. If this issue is resurrected in any form after the election we can have a new thread at that point.