UPDATED: Hungarian government to impose new "internet tax" in 2015

[Lepp]

No, that's on TOP of the game. The average income here is lower to begin with, on retail I bought Shadow of Mordor for ~41 USD. Downloading it would generate so much traffic that in taxes it would cost about 20-25$ extra. EVERY TIME you download it. So you can't get rid of it. Which is an interesting conundrum: you'd have to pay a lot to download large games, so you wouldn't want to delete them. But you have to because your hard drive would fill up awfully fast. So you either buy extra hard drives or pay the tax.

 

Drive to Chanava, Slovakia to download larger files from somewhere with free wifi? If you're in Miskolc with a car with about 25 mpg, it would sadly be cheaper (assuming US gas prices which are much lower most of the time).

[JcGross]

Drive to Chanava, Slovakia to download larger files from somewhere with free wifi? If you're in Miskolc with a car with about 25 mpg, it would sadly be cheaper (assuming US gas prices which are much lower most of the time).

Don't even get me started on the gas prices...

[Thony]

Hope the satelite countries dont do the same nonsense... Even if it meant advert-free internet it would still be unacceptable.

Any government trying to tax internet/data usage should be taken down just for coming up with the idea of screwing with people in another way.

[jaggysnake57]

hey your in the EU just move to the UK .......everyone else does

[mansoor_]

No. Ironically the government's big thing is lowering utility costs like water, electricity, gas. Guess they don't count internet as a "utility".

If they don't own or run it by what right are they taxing their people for it? Or are they taxing the isps who are passing the taxes to the people?

[Thony]

hey your in the EU just move to the UK .......everyone else does

That came up as rasist comment imo...on the other hand there was a post a month ago about british government testing "internet id" system in US.

[jaggysnake57]

That came up as rasist comment imo...on the other hand there was a post a month ago about british government testing "internet id" system in US.

It wasn't Ment as racist everyone does come to the uk weather that is good or bad is a long debate I'm not prepared to get into

As for the id system it's not all bad

[sannukas0016]

0,48€ per GB? That would mean i'd have to pay 1420€ a year if we had this.

That's is outrageous and i hope something gets done about that.

[CatCloud]

Oh shit...
I laugh at the whole "country is performing better and better year by year" My old man owns 2 restaurants over there and its just getting worse.

[lakospeter]

I've also been following the news (I'm Hungarian). To clarify, this planned tax is for ISPs, but ultimately, it means that the end user would have to pay more one way or the other.

Besides the fact that people are already heavily taxed in this country, my biggest issue with this planned tax is that it 

1) could possibly restrict informational freedom by giving less people the possibility to pay the monthly Internet fee

2) would hold back the adoption of technological advancements (audio and video streaming, online storage, etc.)

 

And yes, we are doing something about this. The plan was announced this afternoon, and there is already a protest being arranged on Facebook where 6k people said "going".

https://www.facebook.com/events/881301788579327

 

The online press is full of articles on the issue and so is Twitter and Facebook.

Hopefully Anonymous knows about this already, or will soon.

 

One more thing to mention: there was another big piece of news today about 6 Hungarian citizens that were barred from entering the United States. The whole thing is a mess, and very little is known, but one thing is certain: these 6 people were all public officials or affiliated with the Hungarian government and were involved in some sort of political corruption.

The Internet tax plan could potentially be a fraud to draw people's attention away from this corruption issue. Whatever is the case, Hungarians should give attention to both issues and the connection between them.

[JcGross]

One more thing to mention: there was another big piece of news today about 6 Hungarian citizens that were barred from entering the United States. The whole thing is a mess, and very little is known, but one thing is certain: these 6 people were all public officials or affiliated with the Hungarian government and were involved in some sort of political corruption.

The Internet tax plan could potentially be a fraud to draw people's attention away from this corruption issue. Whatever is the case, Hungarians should give attention to both issues and the connection between them.

 

Thank you for correcting me/filling in the blanks. As for the other scandal, I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turned out that these two are connected, though in what way is unknown yet. This government is a master of propaganda and deception, they hold the media with an iron grip. Every aspect of something like this internet tax would have been heavily calculated. We'll see what happens next.

[ionbasa]

To put this into perspective: 150 HUF =~  0.49 EUR or .62 USD

Per gigabyte, that is insane. I use up about 700-500Gb a month. I cant imagine being taxed for that.

[lakospeter]

To put this into perspective: 150 HUF =~  0.49 EUR or .62 USD

The main issue is not the amount, but the notion.

 

For the record, the minimum wage (after taxes) is 217€ or $276.

Avarage salary is about 490€ or $623 (after taxes).

The amount of tax only makes sense if you know how to put that in perspective.

[Admire]

I have zero knowledge about this but there is no way this is actually going to happen right?

 

Can't imagine the effects this would have on foreign investments

[lakospeter]

As I said, there's a big chance that this is bait to cover more important issues and the government doesn't actually want to issue the tax. Plus, the resistance is forming, so we hope they can't get this through even if they are serious about it.

[Silent_Xaxal]

People we knew this would be coming eventually.  I am shocked it hasn't ended up in North America yet to be honest.  I also would support my federal government, Canada, charging a small tax right now on online purchases.  Start with 1% and go from there.

 

Not really. Fact is, most countries have avoided this by simply applying taxes applied on non-internet purchases on internet purchases. 

 

More taxes is never the solution (And is simply a hindrance to the law-abiding citizen. Taxes can be beneficial, but there has to be a limit.), and you should be happy that your government hasn't even bothered with it. 

 

Why add another tax of questionable value when you can just apply standard sales tax or other purchase related taxes on internet sales?

[ionbasa]

The main issue is not the amount, but the notion.

 

For the record, the minimum wage (after taxes) is 217€ or $276.

Avarage salary is about 490€ or $623 (after taxes).

The amount of tax only makes sense if you know how to put that in perspective.

Not sure if you saw the rest of my coment. My comment was made to give people who aren't european a value to compare to, ie: EUR and USD per gigabyte.

 

My family is Romanian, I know what the average salary (generally) is for Eastern European countries. As a matter of fact my father just came back from a trip to romania a week ago. He had to go get dental work done, total cost here in the US ~$9000, total cost in Romania ~1500 USD.

 

Edit; Asked my father on his opinion, he dislikes Hungary's PM, he told me there are people that want him dead in hungary.

[Maslofski]

i downloaded like 60GB of games in the past week with that massive free weekend steam had, that would totally not be free or even cheap in that case!

[SirPaul]

Little did i read this TAX is for ISPs AND yes customer(user) will have to pay more, but it is just cca 3$ to add yo your monthly fee.   Basically if you are paying 10 dolars , you will now pay 13 dolar, Also this depends, it is ranged from 0.5 eur (sorry its better for me to converse into euros)to 2 euros, depends on how much data you have downloaded.  So if you go above few gigs there is a fixed amount of money, and that is about 2 euros to you monyhly fee.  

People are upset, i dont see why, I mean, yea, it sucks, but it isnt what we think it is, if i was to pay for every gig downloaded. I would need to sell my house/month .

[Rekx]

Little did i read this TAX is for ISPs AND yes customer(user) will have to pay more, but it is just cca 3$ to add yo your monthly fee.   Basically if you are paying 10 dolars , you will now pay 13 dolar, Also this depends, it is ranged from 0.5 eur (sorry its better for me to converse into euros)to 2 euros, depends on how much data you have downloaded.  So if you go above few gigs there is a fixed amount of money, and that is about 2 euros to you monyhly fee.  

People are upset, i dont see why, I mean, yea, it sucks, but it isnt what we think it is, if i was to pay for every gig downloaded. I would need to sell my house/month .

 

Still. They shouldn't be allowed to charge taxes for your internet. Who knows, maybe when people get use to these forms of taxes they'll begin to raise the price. I think this is dumb no matter how little the tax is.

[Lexio]

Just think of some Cloud services now. ( I live in Hungary ). If you upload 1 Gb to your (for example) Google drive or Dropbox, and you have lets say 3 devices to sync it ( Work PC, Home PC, Smartphone ) you will pay 3*150 HUF for just this 1 file... 1 for uploading, 2 for downloading. Or just watching a simple twitch stream ( WAN show )... Watch it in source size, that is way over 1GB for a 1 hour plus stream. Or just simply use xBox live to download the new game you bought... This is insane...

 

I'm a power user because I work in an IT company, and my internet bandwidth is around 240 down / 30 up Mbit /sec. I create around 100-150 Gb / month traffic. That's 15.000 - 22.500 HUF ( that's around 62-93$ / month ) PLUS on top of my monthly internet bill. And this is in a flat with only me and my fiance. Just average youtube watching, stream watching, work, some downloading and browsing the web... buying stuff on Steam... And if I wan't to use a mobile internet access ? 3G 4G ? That will receive this same tax.. so If I buy an average 3Gb traffic/ month solution for 3000 HUF ( 12,5 $ ) then I will have to pay an extra 750 HUF for that ( 3$ ) that is a 25% increase just on my mobile fees...

 

This has to be stopped...  

[Nineshadow]

Ha! 

Hungarians!

 

Keep out of Transilvania!

[Lexio]

Little did i read this TAX is for ISPs AND yes customer(user) will have to pay more, but it is just cca 3$ to add yo your monthly fee.   Basically if you are paying 10 dolars , you will now pay 13 dolar, Also this depends, it is ranged from 0.5 eur (sorry its better for me to converse into euros)to 2 euros, depends on how much data you have downloaded.  So if you go above few gigs there is a fixed amount of money, and that is about 2 euros to you monyhly fee.  

People are upset, i dont see why, I mean, yea, it sucks, but it isnt what we think it is, if i was to pay for every gig downloaded. I would need to sell my house/month .

 

You got that wrong... The top limit of payment is only applied to telecommunication ( calling, texting ) services like IP phones, and VOIP solutions. Anything other than that is 150 HUF / Gb... This is just a "cover-up" they are trying to sell to people... So people who are not tech related could be fooled easily...

[Lexio]

Ohh and I forgot to mention that this will result in the disappearance of all the "Free Wi-Fi" spots all over the country, because no-one will be stupid enough to pay for someone else downloading huge data trough his internet...

[Stefan Becker]

Oh, I'm sure everyone will love it.

 

 

/sarcasm