No, it is a charge for a service, no different than paying UPS to deliver a package or a taxi driver to deliver me. A tax as defined by Wikipedia, is
A google search on “define:taxes” turns this up also:
Note the keywords/phrases “involuntary” and “by a state or functional equivalent of a state.”
So I would say that if you, as an owner of a TV, have no legal choice to NOT pay the fee, it is a tax.
As far as the collection method, even if the fees go “directly” to the final entity, I don’t think a check is made out to the BBC (correct me if I’m wrong), but to the government body enforcing and collecting it. It may pass thru with minimal delay to the BBC, but this doesn’t mean “directly” to me. It also may have a collection fee siphoned from the income before disbursement.
In the case of the cable franchise fees, they are collected by the cable company as part of the bill (just like the taxes on the telephone bills) and remitted to the appropriate local government every 6 months in my area, without any processing fees deducted. Is this “direct”? And does it make any difference?
No. As others have emphasized, if you own a TV in Britain, you cannot legally make that decision. In the US, you can choose to subscribe to cable, satellite or none without legal penalty, whatever choice you make.
But what’s the difference? If you get cable, you have no legal choice to NOT pay for it. And over here if you have a TV, you have no legal choice to not pay the license fee, either. I’m afraid I don’t see the difference that makes it a tax. It’s not involuntary.
Let me try this again.
The government don’t collect it. They don’t enforce it. If you see a TV dectector van driving around, that is not a government vehicle; it belongs to Capita, the firm to whom TV Licensing, a part of the BBC, have outsourced enforcement to.
There is no collection fee taken by the government, because not only do they not have the money at any point, they also don’t collect it in the first place.
Again, what’s the difference? You can legally make that decision in Britain, by not owning a TV! Easy. Just as you can over there by not owning a cable subscription (and having it put in).
Just as some added information; you don’t need a licence fee to watch TV on your mobile, or on any kind of handheld TV.
There are many places (and the number seems to be increasing) in the U.S. where this is simply not possible. Where I live, for example, there is no, repeat no, antenna TV available at all. Nada. I live in a community with about 50,000 total permanent residents (and about another 20,000 students) in a pair of towns near each other. Cable or satellite TV is it; there is nothing else.
I’d gladly pay only $20 per month for commercial-free TV. Even the lowest cable TV tiers in the U.S. are usually more than that, and hardly commercial-free, PBS more or less excepted.
Have you ever actually owned a TV with a proper aerial installed in the attic or rooftop? Because I only got cable 3 years ago, and we get something like 13 channels, and all of them came in clearly, except for one one VHF station broadcast out of South Bend (which really isn’t intended for our area, anyway). We even had HDTV without cable, so you can add however many extra stations that was.
As an aside, when the UK goes digital and we’re all left with either a digital receiver or nothing, we all will get a lot more channels (TV and Radio) through Freeview. IIRC the license fee will be the same and the cost of a new receiver (which varies from £30 to £100) is a simple one off payment.
You can own a tv, you just can’t receive TV signals. You may watch all the DVDs you like, though. Similarly, you can’t receive signals on a cable box without paying for it here.
Well, the difference is that in the U.S. you are paying for a service and if you don’t want the service or don’t use the service, you don’t have to pay it. Nobody is making all of us pay 39 cents a day so that all of us can mail a letter; only the people actually using the service pay.
Under the explanations given above, it seems clear that in the UK the TV license fee is to support the service of the BBC. But the charge is made regardless of whether you use the service or not. Merely having the mechanical means to do so – means that can be used for other purposes, like watching DVDs – and it is assumed you use the service. So it’s not the same as cable TV in the U.S; it’s not even like licensing your car over here, because you don’t actually have to license your car unless you’re driving it. Park it in your garage all year and you don’t have to license it.
IOW, I think the amazing thing to most of us Americans is that you have to repeatedly pay a fee – which sure as shooting looks like a tax – simply for owning a thing, in order to support a service, regardless of whether you actually use the service or not. The only even remotely similar situation I can think of in the U.S. – where a repeated fee is levied without regard to use – is property taxes. I can’t think of a single example of a piece of personal property (as opposed to real property) where such a situation exists. I’m pretty sure it would be unconstitutional.
You are perfectly free to own a car without paying the government a cent, as long as you don’t drive it on the government roads.
That doesn’t appear to be the case with the British TV tax, which is collected whether or not you use the service (BBC) for which the tax is collected.
That, also, does not apply to cars that stay on private property. (Again, the British equivalent would be a TV that isn’t used to watch the BBC. The difference is that such a TV would be taxed to to subsidize the BBC anyway.)
Yes, I have. I have lived in homes with those external TV antenna that are attached to a motor and can rotate to get the best signal. Even in a major metro area, there can be problems. As the previous poster established, it’s a matter of where you live to a large extent. You are just lucky.
Sure I do. All I have to do is unsubscribe. The cable company won’t remove my TV, or even dig up so much as a millimeter of cable – they’ll just turn off my signal.
However, you can’t decline to pay the BBC tax without giving up your TV – including non-BBC broadcasts. The cable equivalent would be if the cable company responded to a cancelled subscription by hauling off your TV, or at least disabling the antenna.
Show me anyone in Britain who doesn’t use or benefit from anything provided by the BBC (see lists earlier in the thread), and I’ll concede that you might have a point.
The posts I’ve read from our friends across the pond indicate to me that the Brit government has found a way to tax citizens without exactly calling it a tax. Government officials LOVE to do this sort of thing, because then they can crow about the service provided AND say that it isn’t funded by tax dollars. That’s why American politicos love their pork barrel projects so much as well.
Don’t look for the British government to give up on this dodge without a fight.
If you start drawing parallels between healthcare and mere television, then you undermine the “it’s not a tax because you don’t have to watch TV” argument. Advert-free TV is a nice-to-have, not a necessity. Of course, if you think that having major TV that is not made for profit is also important, which I don’t, then mandatory fees or charitable donations are the only way.
This isn’t really the case with the BBC. The quasi-autonomous status of the organisation means that politicians can’t credibly claim credit for its achievements - indeed, they’re more likely to be critical of it. Many to the right-of-centre are quite clear that they do not like the current setup and that they want the licence system abolished.
It’s not about the lack of adverts. It’s a belief that a major broadcaster freed from overwhelming commercial concerns has the potential to provide a far broader service. That it “is not made for profit” is the means, not the end.