The European Union (EU) is considering a project to tax emails and mobile text messages to increase funding support for its 25 member countries in the future.
Alain Lamassoure, a powerful member of the European Parliament and a member of the ruling UMP party in France, has proposed the idea of adding a tax of 1.5 cents per SMS and 0.00001 cents per email. “This amount is very small, but when considering the billions of messages sent every day, it will accumulate into a significant source of revenue.”
According to Lamassoure, taxing emails sent worldwide is a good initiative, both simple and effective in leveraging profits from new technology.
Currently, the EU’s budget primarily comes from import duties, value-added tax, and direct contributions from member countries. However, after a year of discussions about its financial structure, by December 2005, the EU decided to change its budgeting methods through several new projects, which could potentially be initiated in 2008-2009.
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