In Hungary, they are planning to introduce a tax on internet traffic

On October 21, the Hungarian Minister of Finance, Mihály Varga, submitted to the local parliament a draft bill providing for changes to the taxation regime, which are planned to be introduced in 2015. Among them was a regulation taxing backbone providers with a special "internet tax" - it is assumed to charge 150 Hungarian forints for each gigabyte of pumped traffic, which is approximately equal to 50 euro cents.

At a press conference for telecom representatives, held on October 21, Varga separately noted that despite the fact that it was initially planned to tax more traditional means of communication, most calls and text messages today go through the Internet, which caused the extension of taxation to traffic. It was also mentioned that, according to the law, the new subject of taxation would be the provider directly, and not the end user. At the same time, there are concerns that the increase in providers' expenses will be compensated by increasing the cost of the service for ordinary home users, as well as entrepreneurs.

With a similar legislative measure, it is planned to attract about 20 billion forints (i.e. about 65.2 million euros) to the budget already during 2015.

Despite the fact that Hungary has become the first country where such a legislative initiative has every chance to materialize, it is still not a pioneer in this area. Back in 2008, France discussed proposals to tax Internet traffic, Internet telephony and individual popular services; the proceeds from these measures were supposed to be used to finance state TV channels.

In turn, in the US in 1998, Bill Clinton signed the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which prohibits the taxation of the Internet of any type at any level (country, state and local municipality), including listing examples of "prohibited" measures - such as, for example, tax on traffic, e-mail or access to the end provider.

Main source:
www.portfolio.hu/en/economy/hungary_to_impose_internet_levy_in_2015_tax_plans_show.28561.htmlSource: geektimes.ru/post/240546/