Tax on email and SMS?!?

I just read a story covered by nu.nl (a dutch news-site, so in dutch!), mentioning that the EU is investigating options to put tax on sending an mail (0.00001 Euro-cent) and SMS (1.5 Euro-cent)!!

What the fuck?!?

I've heared of the idea before, never thought it would be seriously considered/investigated.

Basic reason for it is the fact that globalisation of market and economies make it harder and harder for authorities to collect enough tax-money to run the country. It is for that reason that the European Parliament is finding new sources of income?!? Other ideas for instance are taxing on the online purchase of flighttickets (which in a way would make more sense).

But putting tax on emailing? Or sending text messages (SMS)?? CRAAAZZZY!

Sending an ordinary slain-mail message isn't taxed? The stamp you put on the envelop is to pay for the *transport* of the letter. With email this is all digitally and obviously one is already paying for the transport mechanisme (your internet-feed), so what the heck?!?

The fee that is proposed is near to nothing, so no one will really feel it (besides the small number of large corporates sending 100,000's of mail per day), but the idea alone…STOP IT!

How would they like to track this anyway? Setting up and maintaining a system for this would probably cost more than can ever be collected.

Thinking about this a second time…the only advantage could be that spammers suffer from it, then again…they are not trackable anyway, so will most likely not be taxed. 

The SMS-tax is considerably higher and will most certainly be harder to implement, again…the idea is off-base!