What is the point of this license fee in this day and age? Everyone has a TV, so everyone pays the license fee. Wouldn't it be simpler to just use a part of the taxes already collected to go to BBC.
My problem with this type of license fee collection is that it bring forward a number of costs associated with it that could be removed if it went directly from taxes and that today everyone has TV so it doesn't really "tax the rich" that it probably was intended to do in the early days.
No, the idea never was to "tax the rich". The license fees as present in many European countries are not taxes because the broadcasters are independent from the governments, including full control over what they do with _their_ budget. The idea is that the governments cannot (threaten to) cut their budgets to enforce pro-government reporting on public broadcasters.
Not true. I and others I know use a TV only as a screen for videogames and do not watch TV in any form. You explicitly do not need a license just to own a TV.
Interesting, in Croatia it's specifically a fee on owning any type of radio or tv receiver. Nowadays that applies to almost anything, from TVs and car radios to PCs and smartphones.
In Italy it doesn't apply to PCs and smartphones. It does apply to DVB-T dongles though.
It used to be a separate tax, now it's collected as part of the electric bill. You have to opt out explicitly instead of "opting in" by paying; this makes it much worse for people to evade the payment, since they would be making a false statement when opting out. So many people were evading the fee, that it has since been reduced by a third or so.
I've got no TV service here in the US, but a couple large TVs. I watch movies on other media occasionally, but for the most part they're used for video games.
Buying an 80" monitor isn't really cost efficient.
> Wouldn't it be simpler to just use a part of the taxes already collected to go to BBC.
That would make the BBC dependent on the government for its revenue, which definitely isn't desirable. The current system, where the BBC collects its own revenue under the authority of a royal charter, is intended to help insulate it from political interference.
It's how the CBC is structured. They receive funding from taxes and their own revenue streams: merchandizing, advertising, syndication, and so on.
It works. That is, it works until it doesn't.
The CBC is entirely "free" to every Canadian who wants to use it, and it is fantastic. I wish it were expanded in scope.
But there is an opposition that wants it dismantled and moved from government funding at all costs. Usually, the opposition is purely along political lines which is disappointing.
So, I suppose the argument against it being tax-funded is that it become yet another chip in the political game. An argument for tax-funded is that there are no additional fees awaiting those who cannot afford them.
Seems like something of a tossup or...yet to be determined.
The added separation from political influence is big points, but it's rather moot when one group who've already made their mind up will just shout "conspiracy" and then the facts don't matter anyway. That happens here in Canada, to be sure.
I understand the logic between removing it from taxes, but I find it hard to accept that this gave it any degree of independence.
If opposition got in power and wanted to dismantle BBC or CBC, I'm sure that the fact that they gain their funding through a fee rather than tax is not something that would stop them. In the end, the fee was specified and allowed them to use it by some law that was passed in the parliament.
> But there is an opposition that wants it dismantled and moved from government funding at all costs.
I'm still not sure why entertainment needs public money. I mean just look at Marvel, Netflix, Disney... they are all insanely profitable. Billion dollars profitable.
When you make content that people want to watch, it just works.
That just sounds like paperwork. Legislation forcing people to pay a “TV license” and legislation forcing people to pay more tax and then transferring those tax funds to the BBC is effectively the same thing.
Despite your feelings on the issue, the difference is quite stark. Relying on allocations in yearly budgets, subject to the political whims of lawmakers, is clearly a different animal altogether.
During renegotiation, sure Parliament can opt not to renew. But for the duration of the charter, the BBC has an uninterrupted period of collections beyond the fiscal year of the government, which cannot be raided to fund the new social program of the day.
Couldn't the Parliament negotiate with BBC to allow them funding of XY pounds per citizen. Amount to be transferred monthly from the taxes.
It would have the same effect. For the duration of the charter, BBC would be guaranteed funding without interference from the government. Only difference is method of collection and in my view, reduced cost of collection.
Wouldn’t be much of a Royal charter if the BBC became an Office of the Government.
If you are an agency which wishes to retain some modicum of control over your own destiny, then you most likely wish to retain some modicum of control over your sources of revenue.
Forcing people to pay a TV license means you need to send the bills to people, you need to enforce payment, you need to track payment, you need to sue people who do not pay.
All just so that you get an illusion of independence from political power.
At last from an American perspective, that seems like a technicality, and it uses government enforcement tools.
The US funds the Corporation for Public Broadcasting directly, and even under Trump, there wasn't much pressure around changing its funding--I guess defunding Sesame Street looks bad. Of course, public broadcast stations turn into panhandlers once every few months, so it's not without its faults.
For some definition of “wasn’t much pressure”. All four of Trump’s yearly budget requests zeroed out the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, though Congress wasn’t interested.
I agree that the licence fee is an anachronism and the BBC should have alternative funding instead, perhaps a ring-fenced budget paid from general taxation, but not because everyone has a TV.
Some people don't watch broadcast TV, and the BBC and its agents have been infamous for getting heavy-handed and harassing those who choose not to and who perfectly legitimately and legally do not have a TV licence. This is backed by a controversial law that criminalises the failure to have a licence if you do need one, which under any normal circumstances would only be a minor civil matter.
Meanwhile, today the BBC is very much a multimedia institution, but the licence fee remains tied specifically to broadcast television, a historical anomaly that could be fixed.
A different funding model that broke that link and removed the need for a separate licence fee could fix all of the problems with licence evasion and heavy-handed enforcement that have been a black mark on the BBC's history, as well as providing a fairer system where the public service is funded from public funds rather than singling out a particular group.
Im sure thats true. We had it the same way in Denmark, but have now changed it, to be payed for by taxes.. this had made it very political, and the budget is now decided by whatever party is in control, and the national tv/radio is becoming more and more of a coward because of it..
The idea is to make the poor and working classes pay for it, being regressive everyone pays the same, taxes are progressive, the more you earn the more you pay.
Government set the licence fee and legislation around it every 5 or 6 years. The last renewal put government appointed editors into the BBC in exchange for a change in Law from 'watch live BBC channels = you have to pay' to 'watch live non-BBC channels = you have to pay'. So now, even if you are just watching BBC competitors,you have to pay the BBC.. what a great business model.
I'm sure that is part of it, but I would love to see the breakdown of the costs.
When it was first introduced it made sense to have a fee, not many people had a TV so by collecting the fee, you didn't tax the people without it. But today everyone has it, so this no longer applies.
Independence argument has some merit, but I would expect that there can be different methods that would provide the same level of independence.
It's ironically gone from being a pretty progressive tax (only relatively well off people had TV's) to being a very regressive tax ("everyone" has TV's but you pay the same amount no matter how much you earn).
The independence argument has largely been destroyed by the government itself - the last few governments have tightened their control of the management of the BBC considerably to a point where budget control matters much less.
Independence went with the Hutton enquiry when Parliament set up the BBC trust to replace the BBC board of governors.
It gradually shifted from being an independent well staffed news organization that routinely held the government to account to an understaffed RT-like propaganda outfit and huffpost-like reprinter of press releases.
I've brought this argument forward many times since I moved to the UK, and everyone I've talked to hates the idea of turning the fee into a general tax. It's a weird refusal that I genuinely can't understand as someone not born here.
Everyone seems happy enough with the idea of paying tax for public libraries or parks or other social institutions they may never use because it benefits society, but bring up the tv license and it's like arguing with a brick wall.
1) concern about the neutrality of the BBC, esp. if you don't think they are currently neutral. It also might change the incentives of the BBC if funding is either guaranteed, or controlled by government.
2) the principle of general tax without strong reason. The government isn't trustable, they already privatised much of the railways. consent to general taxation give more power to government.
3) I don't have a television, and more people are choosing not to have one. There are shifts happening both wrt to media is consumed, as well as how laws are changing to adapt (e.g. requiring any device with a screen requiring a licence). Would be better for the situation to stabilise before deciding if a general tax is a good idea.
4) The whole TV-Van issue sours the issue. Public Libraries (AFAIK) don't send people after you for paying fees. The issue of censorship and management of publicly available information are also hot topics in libraries, but there is (arguably) a greater degree of "self serve" in a library, as opposed to planned/programmed broadcast - libraries don't generally create the majority of their content.
> Have you seen how much BBC bosses and stars are paid? Far higher than other public servants, so yes I would be against making it compulsory
It's not far higher than other public servants, and the Taxpayers Alliance are liars and fantasists.
It's like how they continually misrepresent the Prime Minster's salary as being in the low £100ks. It isn't. The Prime Minster's complete remuneration package is worth well over a million pounds a year.
I'm not sure it was meant to be a tax on the rich; It was initially introduced in 1923 to cover radio broadcasts, and widened to become the television license in 1946.
Also, the appeal of this funding model makes it independent of Governmental cuts and the politicisation of programming.
The license fee is fairer than a tax, because if you don't watch terrestrial television you don't have to fund it. For example, if you just watch Netflix, you don't need to pay for a license fee.
If the license fee were replaced with a tax I would end up paying more than the cost of a license fee for something I don't use - not keen.
You can apply for exemption [0] - needs to be reconfirmed every 2 years and sometimes more often if TVL/Capita thinks there 'might' have been changes you did not report (e.g. you subscribed to a service that participates in their reporting scheme - NowTV is one of the providers that reports their customers). You pay nothing if you qualify for one of the four exemption bases.
Note: if the exemption lapses without a new one in place (or a license purchase), they will actually send goons to 'investigate' after a short period.
The official word from TV Licensing is quite misleading (which admittedly is in their interest). You do not require any exemption nor to correspond with them at all.
Their "officers" are private individuals employed by a private company who have no special rights to enter your property. Absent a search warrant, it is almost certainly a mistake to allow them to enter your property.
Note that it's not a _legal_ exemption -- there's no requirement in law to register that you _don't_ have a TV, but they'd prefer you did so they can target their harassment more effectively.
I've given up telling them -- it's less effort to drop their letters in the bin, and appears no less effective at stopping new ones arriving. That was after being "visited" a few years back and the goon trying the classic "if you've nothing to hide".
I don't have a TV... But that's not the point, it's no longer relevant today as made apparent by their threatening letters that make it sound as though it's impossible to avoid paying them. What is relevant: I don't watch BBC, period. And yet every 2 years or every time I move I am threatened again for the offense of not wanting to watch the BBC.
I recognize that in the UK at one point this licensing model made sense due to combination of funding broadcast equipment, and the BBC has given a huge amount of value over the years - but I honestly think the quality of their content has decreased significantly since then, especially the documentaries. The licensing model no longer makes sense in a world where they are just one of multiple payed on demand services usually delivered over the internet for which we are already directly funding. It should be opt-in not opt-out.
My problem with this type of license fee collection is that it bring forward a number of costs associated with it that could be removed if it went directly from taxes and that today everyone has TV so it doesn't really "tax the rich" that it probably was intended to do in the early days.