Computer tax in the UK?

Here's a solution...let's tax the computers! Now the UK is considering a tax on computers that could eventually replace the TV License fee. Technically, the license fee does not expire until 2017, but they are apparently keeping close watch on technology to see how things develop. Perhaps they should have been doing this a bit earlier!

I don't know about you, but we see a slight flaw in the reasoning. Supposedly this tax is being considered because of the shift in trends from off-air to on-line entertainment. However, it really isn't feasible to watch TV or do much else interesting for long on a computer that isn't connected to broadband. And with only about 6 million broadband subscribers out of a total UK population of about 58 million, that's just a bit over 10% of the households so equipped.

Yet one could guess that a much larger number of households are owners of TV sets, possibly close to 100%, so this raises a few interesting questions - the most important being the actual rate of the tax. Based on these stats, it may need to be well over £1,000 to even begin to approach current revenues! What might this do to the growth of home computing in the UK and moreover to Tony Blair's "Broadband Britain" initiative? And really, how much revenue does the BBC think it could be losing as a result of the growth of PC's?

The last question is the one which requires most consideration. There is a lot of hype about this whole issue, and the BBC would have us to believe that real harm may come to them for all those folks deciding to turn off their TV's and watch the programs over the Internet. But the more likely scenario is that due more to sociological changes, some of which are brought about by technological advances, people may simply watch less TV. In other words, habits change. The real answer is for them to keep up with those changes by creating innovative programming which people will still want to watch.

This is not brain surgery folks, it's competition. Rather than cry foul and ask the government for help, why not come up with some innovative approaches to the problem?