Re:TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
by afavour on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @08:16AM
(#25833127)
Strongly agreed. Having lived in the US for a good number of years now I can see how the idea of vans roaming looking for TV viewers is baffling, but the public TV offering by the BBC, while definitely not perfect, is miles ahead of both the public and network offerings on US TV (though credit to the likes of PBS and NPR for doing miraculous work with a fraction of the budget!). I even got my start in computing from the BBC Micro machines at school.
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Re:TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
by ouid on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @12:28PM
(#25835947)
Then pay for it with taxes on sales of television sets themselves.
Re:TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
by afavour on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @03:47PM
(#25838664)
Pay for a recurring service via a one-off payment? What could go wrong?!
Aside from that, a TV license is £157 a year. Let's say a TV lasts three years (which feels conservative, pretty sure I had my last TV for eight), you'd need to get the buyer to pay an extra £471 when they purchase their TV. How is front-loading such a payment in the interests of the viewer? Not to mention you don't have to pay the fee if you're only watching streaming services like Netflix.
Re:TV detector vans once prowled the streets of England
by mandelbrotwurst on Tuesday January 19, 2021 @04:53PM
(#25839415)
You can set the rate of the tax to account for the time value of money, charging less up front than you would for the sum total of the subscription over the life of the device.
You could argue that increasing the up front cost is a regressive tax, but you should be able to more than make up for that by not needing to pay fleets of trucks to drive around all day looking to find TV tax scofflaws.