McCreevy warns Internet users of new EU levy

national | miscellaneous | news report

Thursday November 21, 2002 10:15

by Sara McEvoy

smcevoy at hotmail dot com

The Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, has warned Irish Internet users that the government may implement a new EU levy on email messages after the next Budget.

The Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, has warned Irish Internet users that the government may implement a new EU levy on email messages after the next Budget.

Sources close to the Minister said the Department of Finance was considering the introduction of a levy from senders in the order of 1 cent per email. The maximum amount allowed under the EU Directive is four cent per message.

Under the scheme, Internet service providers would collect a small nominal fee per message on behalf of the Exchequer. The new charges would then be passed on to the consumer. The monies collected would in turn go towards expanding the country's IT infrastructure.

"It is up to each member state how they spend it, as long as it goes to IT-related projects," one official said. The principle was much the same as public-private partnerships to build new toll roads, he said. "It would be similar to the way the monies collected from the recent plastic levy go towards environmental measures."

However, several Internet companies argued that the new EU levy would stifle Internet use in Ireland

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Comments (5 of 5)

File under urban legend

by Ray

Thu Nov 21, 2002 10:37

Do you have a reference for this story, or for this EU directive? Its commercial and political suicide, as well as practically almost impossible. Expect this tax to be implemented shortly after the charges for using the public footpaths, and the tax break for practicing surgery at home rather than using up hospital resources.

How can they police it?

by Paul O'Donnell

Thu Nov 21, 2002 11:11

Surely everyone will just cut down on using their main POP3 accounts and switch over to Hotmail, Yahoo! or other free services.

i fear it may be more than an urban myth

by pat c

Thu Nov 21, 2002 11:24

i've seen this mooted in the business & tech pages of the irish times before & it wasn't on apr 1.

there may be something to it.

i'll try & track it down after i've despatched a few fascisti, debagged a brace of zionists & seen off the southern unionists.

(vote for me as contrarian of the year!)

on a free internet.

by iosaf - GNU

Thu Nov 21, 2002 12:19

iosaf at email dot com

approx 6.500.000.000 people on Earth.
approx 1.000.000.000 servers on the internet
approx 2.000.000.000 people with regular access to the internet.
there are 3 major net structures in operation globaly.
The dominant language is anglo-american
the second language is español.

The World Bank decided that internet penetration of Africa was a world development priority 2000.

Linux offers a free internet access software based on the most beautiful machine code ever written.
Microsoft offers internet access and use based on comercial exploitation and profit sitting on sloppy machine code.

The internet and the cyber revolution offer the possibility for free access to information world wide.
The potential for positive effects is great.
The present negative effects have been huge.

The internet has been pivotal in the global increase in child exploitation and sexual exploitation.
The internet has been used by activists to trace the wrongdoings of such people and their monstrosities.
for information on "free internet issues"
go to the link.
Reclaim the GNU support the efforts of Torvald Linux to give the world community a free interent software and share the information age.
The only other option is th emergence of a global techno-class, using only ilcensed software and being taxed and traced at every twist of the beautiful application of algorythms which is OUR net.
this is a link to reclaim the media a transnational group dedicated to keeping media free and open. (free and open means free from thought censorship and open in access and also free from child/sexual exploitation).
this link is in English.
http://barcelona.indymedia.org/front.
php3?article_id=25906&group=webcast

if you´re interested in learning more about Linux

ponder The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate
... available on the Web and are easily found through any search service. It's fun to read this and note who joined into the discussion; you see user-hacker Ken Thompson (one of the founders of Unix) and David Miller (who is a major Linux kernel hacker now), as well as many others. To put this discussion ...
http://www.sindominio.net/biblioweb/telematica/open-sources-html/node137.html 08/06/99, 123891 bytes

or go searching for hackclubs if you´re fascinated by the beauty of maths and want to do your bit to end Bangkok etc.,

urban myth it is.

Fri Nov 22, 2002 12:12

i've checked with the dept of finance & yeah theres no substance to it.

just goes to show, you can't believe everything you read in the times bus/tech section.

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McCreevy warns Internet users of new EU levy

Comments (5 of 5)