Wednesday, November 06, 2013

2331 - TV tax in England

Over the air broadcast TV. Free right? Well in the US it is. But not so much in European countries. I knew that Germany had a TV tax, per TV, but I didn't know about England and their TV licence tax.


That's right, you have to pay a tax to watch over the air TV. How do they know? There are spies (apparently private contractors) that go around with detectors. If they detect a TV in your house you had better be paying the tax.

I saw a story about guy arguing with the TV spy guy saying that he didn't use his TV to watch over the air TV. That lead me to the Wikipedia article on English TV licencing.


6 comments:

eViL pOp TaRt said...

Wow! That kind of tax really sucks!

Grand Crapaud said...

But if you watch streaming videos, is that also taxed?

Mike said...

Angel - It would be hard to get used too in the US.

Grand - According to the article you only need a licence for broadcast TV. Any other use for your video device is not taxed. That's why some people claim not to watch broadcast TV. But the spies seem to know what you are doing.

Bilbo said...

I lived in Germany for a number of years, and we got used to those cars bristling with antennas that roamed the streets looking for the signals from unlicensed TVs. The upside to having to pay the TV tax is that you don't have shows interrupted by commercials all the time ... the commercials are set in blocks between shows.

Mike said...

Bilbo - That might be worth a small fee to get the commercials grouped.

Big Sky Heidi said...

I prefer free T.V., even with the commercials.

However, it's a Tennessee tradition to violate governmental rules they don't like. After all, we have a history of moonshining and bootlegging into dry counties!