In Hungary, about to introduce a tax on Internet traffic

October 21, Finance Minister Mihaly Varga, Hungary has made the local parliament a draft bill that would change the taxation regime, which is scheduled to be in 2015, the year. Among them wormed and rate taxed backbone providers special tax "on the Internet" - is supposed to charge at 150 HUF per gigabyte pumped traffic, which is approximately equal to 50 euro cents.

At a press conference for representatives of telecoms, which was held on October 21 Varga separately noted that despite the fact that it was initially planned to tax the more traditional means of communication, most of the calls and text messages today passes through the Internet, and this is due to the expansion of the taxation and traffic. And mentioned that the law new subject of taxation will be the provider directly and not the end user. Along with this, there are fears that rising costs of providers will be compensated by increasing the cost of services for ordinary home users, as well as entrepreneurs.

Such a legislative measure to the budget is planned to raise about 20 billion forints (ie, about 65.2 million euros) already during 2015.

Despite the fact that Hungary was the first country where such legislative initiative has the potential to appear in the flesh, it still is not a pioneer in this field. Back in 2008, the year in France, discussed the proposals of taxation of Internet traffic, Internet telephony and certain popular services; proceeds from these measures intended to put on the funding of public television stations.

In turn, in the US in 1998 by Bill Clinton signed the Internet Tax Freedom Act, which prohibits the imposition of any type of Internet taxes at any level (national, state and local municipality), including a list of examples of "forbidden" measures - as For example, a tax on traffic, e-mail or access to the terminating provider.

Main source:
www.portfolio.hu/en/economy/hungary_to_impose_internet_levy_in_2015_tax_plans_show.28561.html

Source: geektimes.ru/post/240546/