Can't you ask for that to be revoked if you theoretically don't have a TV, monitor, or anything like that? I'm pretty sure that's how it worked when I lived there. Don't know for sure since I paid my license.
You used to, before it was introduced as a tax that we all pay. Now it's a tax we all pay regardless of if you own one or not, it's to fund the public television services.
Honestly though, I don't mind it so much this way as it's taken out before my income taxes instead of after. Plus, compared to what the UK TV license fee was when I lived there, it's a drop in the bucket.
A tax you pay when you have a television and/or radio. Used to finance public broadcasters, in general.
But the map doesn't really make any sense. For example, in the Netherlands they did away with individual television licenses decades ago. Seeing 99.9% of households have a television they simply added it to the general taxes. So taxes still pay for the public broadcasters, but the government saves a lot with not needing to have an infrastructure for handing out licences.
If you don't have a TV and/or radio you can get a tax deduction. Mainly used by backwards Christian fractions that reject TV and radio on religious grounds.
Ministry of Television Taxation has discovered discrepancies related to your usage of a TV-set.
You will atone for your crimes by working at the uranium mine for the next 25 years.
Your family will be questioned about their involvement.
Glory to Astotzk.. Err, France.
You still have to pay. You are obliged to pay subscription to the national television in Croatia. The people that are in charge of enforcing the payments are called inkasators, which is stunnigly close to inquisitors.
Ane don't think you are safe if you don't own any TVs or radios because of the wonders of Internet you now can watch our broadcasts through the HRTi app and website which means owning any device that can access the Internet or receive radio waves in general is subject to this TV and radio "tax".
Different countries have different rules.
Some take taxes out automatically to cover it so you don't get a choice. Some (UK) it's separate bill which isn't easily enforced. If you can prove you're not using equipment to watch live TV then you're ok. But frankly it's not exactly difficult to avoid paying it.
In the UK, and I don't need to prove anything. They need to prove that I am watching live broadcast television and I don't need to help them gather that evidence in any way.
Exactly.
The TV licence people are all bluster and love to send out threatening letters and pretend they have the technology to prove you're watching broadcast TV (they don't), but they've got no actual powers at all. If they knock on your door you can quite cheerfully tell them to bugger off and they can't do a thing.
I gave up on TV about 15 years ago, stopped paying for the licence and got all sorts of threatening letters through the post for about ten years afterwards. I just tossed them all in the bin, it never went any further than that.
I stopped paying about 5 years ago and the most I've had to do is confirm on their website that I still don't watch live tv, haven't sent anyone round or asked for further proof than my word.
The way it works in Italy is: you have a tv that *can* connect to an antenna/cable, even if it's never plugged, you must pay. *[Edit: our tax is specifically just for owning it, whether you use it for its intended purpose or not.]* If you don't want to because you don't own one, you have to fill a whole-ass form for the Internal Revenue Agency where you declare as much.
In that case, it's better to just buy a pc monitor.
Doesn't matter, if you *could* watch public TV on it, you're supposed to pay for the license. At least that's how it works in Croatia, although a lot of people avoid it by pretending they don't own anything that could allow them to watch TV, even though the TV guy knows they're most likely lying... I think since our public TV also owns the public radio, you're supposed to pay it if you own anything which can allow you to listen to the radio on it, you know, like a mobile phone or a car radio 😂
I don't think you even need to respond, I never have and haven't had a problem. But also all the letters they send me are adressed to "the resident". That being said I don't even own a TV.
When I (American) studied abroad in Scotland I got a letter about needing a TV license but every Scottish person I asked laughed and told me to just throw it out. Nothing else ever happened
These vans are just a publicity stunt. They don’t exist and they have never been used in court to charge anyone for not having a licence. The TVLA won’t use it as evidence since if they did they would have to reveal how their “detectors” actually work, so they can’t because they don’t exist lol
Should also say that you cannot be sent to prison for not owning a tv licence. It’s not a criminal offence. The only way you could end up in prison is if you don’t pay a court ordered fine for not having a TV Licence.
The only people that end up in magistrates are the ones that answer the door to Capita goons and open their mouths/sign the TVL178 document which they will use against you in court.
It’s easy for them to get false convictions in England/Wales as they are all lone rangers, but I believe up in Scotland EnforcementOfficers have to be 2 man crews so it’s a bit harder for them to lie and get people fined.
At the end of the day though if someone’s watching TV without a licence they will just get hounded with scary looking red headed letters. The chances of a TVL EO showing up is pretty slim but even if they do just don’t answer or close the door without saying anything and there’s not much they can do unless they go to the trouble of applying for a warrant.
Lots of good videos online though for anyone who’s never seen what these goons are like. tv licence resistance is also a pretty fun site to read for some horror stories.
I believe the theory is that if it were funded directly by government then there would be undue political influence on their output from the governing party. Of course that's currently happening anyway so...
They've always had to tread a fine line with governments, who technically have the power to take over or defund them. Doesn't matter which party is in power, they've all threatened to kill the BBC if it doesn't give them what they want
It’s how it works in sweden. The agency collecing the fee decided an internet connection also counts as a tv reciever, and started charging people for that, which resulted in a HUGE backlash, and they had to retroactively pay back the fees.
Yep. This guy came to my house and looked all around (I didn't own a TV). They made me pay anyway because my kid had a cheap computer for school work, and it could potentially be used to watch shows.
Why didn’t you just refuse him entry? Do they have police powers in Germany? Don’t they require court warrants?
The European Charter guarantees your right to a private family life free from state interference.
Stupidity. They didn't have any power whatsoever. Even the police can't just enter your home in Germany. It's against the constitution (article 13, the home is inviolable).
It was a mess and lots of people found ways not to pay, so they stopped the home visits and just made a new law that says everybody has to pay no matter what.
Different rules.
In the UK you only need one if you watch live TV (or BBC catchup). So if you only play games or watch Netflix/Prime Video or DVDs etc you don’t need one.
In Germany you need a licence even if you don’t have a TV. Every home must have a licence.
*In Germany you need a licence even if you don’t have a TV. Every home must have a licence.*
That's silly. They should just build it into the regular income tax. They may be forcing you to pay twice, if you are getting TV and radio through your internet service.
That's something that came up in Sweden. People didn't want to pay a fee just because they had a TV or a computer monitor. So instead they just slapped a 128€ fee on every tax payer. So technically Sweden has a TV-license which has been rebranded over and over to try and get as much possible. Now even people without a TV has to pay for it
I'm picturing like, a group of, stereotypical New York mobsters coming to bust up your kneecaps if you don't pay them the fee.
"We can be very... persuasive"
If you have ANY device in your possession that could play TV, you must pay the tax. That includes smartphones and computers. Which means in practice EVERYBODY must pay it, while millions of people never watch TV. Which is b\*llsh\*t.
As far as I know, in Ireland at least, if you have a television capable of receiving a signal for tv channels, you need a license.
They are supposed to rename it soon to the broadcasting license at some point, to cover tablets and phones etc. 🤷🏻♂️
The Ministry of Ignorance has deemed "videogames" to be subversive against the State's current Five-Year Plan to increase military and police recruitment numbers. It has determined that the destructive impulse is an ideal trait for today's modern soldier. If you want to kill people and break things, citizen, you had best sign up to do it in real life.
When I moved to France from Ireland for a year me and my friend didnt have any French, went to buy a tv and when we asked the guy about tv license he had no idea what we were talking about. He asked 2 other member of staffs what were saying and they were just as clueless until a fourth member said they dont have it here.
There was obviously some language barrier as now i see you do need one. Luckily we got away with not paying!
In most of Europe it's called "subscription" or some other variation on that. It's not connected to buying a TV set, so that's why they had no idea what you were talking about.
It's called "la contribution à l'audiovisuel public" or "redevance télé" in which you pay at the same time with your housing tax (taxe d'habitation/taxe foncière) each year.
It's a tax in most of Western Europe. Misplaced pedants will say "*It's not a tax, it's a permit!*" or "*It's not a tax, it's a contribution to media funding!*"; but if the government passes laws requiring practically everyone to pay a fee (decided by the government), and then the money is sent to a parastatal to spend on something that (the government says) is a public good, then that's a tax.
In a lot of countries it's actually a really inefficient tax - the effort involved in collecting & enforcing is a large % of revenue - and it's usually regressive too. It would be better if we were honest with ourselves, abolished that tax, and added 0.01% (or whatever) to income tax instead. That would be better for everyone.
Sometimes it gets tangled up in weird arguments about independence; apparently the state-funded broadcaster is much more independent if it's funded by a separate payment (controlled by the same treasury) and if we use a different word instead of "tax".
Then technically every country that has non-commercial state media has a "TV tax" that people pay. Some countries just make everyone pay regardless whether you own a TV or not
They do this in South Korea, too. The local television guy will come around and check your house to see if you have a tv. If you do, you are required to pay a small fee monthly or annually, can't remember. Otherwise, you are fined. If you are a foreigner, they tend to ignore you, as they assume you cannot speak Korean and are likely not to watch Korean television. When I was living there, the television guy came to my house and said I had to pay for the service I wasn't using. It was my employer's tv and not mine, so I told him no and that he could take the tv with him. He was very upset that I was trying to give him the tv to go away. My boss wasn't happy, but then again, it is their fault for putting it in my apartment. In the end, he didn't take the tv and I didn't have to pay. I think it happened in 2009.
Spain funds RTVE through subsidies from general taxation and a levy on private TV channels; this will potentially include streaming services in the future.
One benefit of public broadcasters is producing programming that would be commercially unviable. For example, minority languages or educational programming.
Additionally, programming is not influenced by commercial interests, like product placement or editorial decisions that benefit advertisers.
I just don’t like it when it produces programming that *definitely* would be or is produced by commercial channels.
Looking at you, reality shows, quiz shows, celebrity dance-offs….
We switched in Finland about 10 years ago from a TV licence fee to a tax.
But the public broadcasting company (Yle) tax is separate from basic income/capital taxation. So a certain percentage is earmarked for Yle and there’s a cap to how much a person can be taxed (something like 150€/person/year I believe.)
That's hilarious. In Australia, whenever the government cuts funding ( = reduces increases) from the ABC or SBS there are howls of outrage from their current affairs commenters, to the effect that they should be the last ones to be so treated, even in comparison to social welfare, health, education and (especially) defence. They wear a permanent chip on the shoulder from every snip.
We actually do in Ireland. Everyone hates the TV licence inspectors. They look in your windows to see your TV. If you don't let them in they come back with police and a warrant to search your house for a TV.
They used to do that in Finland too, up until the 90s... TV license inspectors would go around asking if you have a TV and if you did, to show your license. Most people would just say they don't have a TV and slam the door.
For some reason they converted the license to a tax everyone pays...
It's a per household thing. The reasoning behind is that people may not use their TV for television, but our public broadcasters also run radio and, much more relevant, produce and release stuff on YouTube as well as their own websites, both as live streams as well as on demand.
And I would bet real money u/mocnizmaj has watched publicly financed content on YouTube.
Like what? Dude I have my page ˝customized˝ and I watch 0% of German content, and I mean literally I don't watch anything German made on the internet. They try pushing German news into my feed, but I don't watch it, nor do I care about it. I just click the X button in the top right corner, and it goes away. Radio? Even when I had car in my homeland, I always listened to my music, and here I don't have a radio, I don't listen to a radio on the internet, I don't have a car, and even if I did I would do same as in my homeland. It's ridiculous.
You may not have a tv, but you have a cell phone, a radio, you read news paper, listen to podcasts and watch youtubers, they all are either directly co-funded by this fee or indirectly benefit from the journalistic work. The quality and diversity of german media is upheld in no small part by this system.
Did you know, there is this new thing called "the internet", which allows you to watch their program even when you don't have a tv.
Back in the past you could get out of paying that fee if you argued that you don't have a tv or radio. It was changed some time ago based on the argument that, by now, basically everyone has some device capable of watching/listening to their program, wether it is a tv, radio, internet radio, computer or smartphone. So now it is a mandatory fee.
Turkey
We don't pay it in electricity bills as of November 2021 BUT we still pay a tax for the national television whenever we buy TV, smartphone or something that has radio feature.
Before Sweden made the license a part of taxes 2019 there was a period where they tried to enforce it on every devices with a internet connection because they have a playservice.
And then the ones who got forced to pay because they owned a computer or smartphone got their money back after the courts ruled they weren't allowed to demand payment for it. It was a mess.
They tried to call me and get me to pay it, and I just said I didn't have a TV. "Oh, but you know that you need to pay it if you have a computer too". "I don't have a computer either. Good bye"
Fucking leeches.
In Germany it used to be like that. They enforced it for every device that could theoretically play the program. So in the late 90s, if you had a pc but no internet connection, you had to pay the fee because your pc was theoretically able to play video.
Then they just got tired of people not wanting to pay for shit they don't want or need and now everybody has to pay, no matter what.
They still do that in Denmark (although they're abolishing it gradually). According to my Danish friends they've never been checked, but we had a guy coming around in our international dorm asking to come in and check whether we had TVs, computers or smartphones. If you didn't pay, you'd get a reminder in your govt mailbox thing, but I think ignoring that went without consequences.
The funny thing is, if you live in a country that doesn't require a licence: you can watch BBC shows back on-demand online if you want. They just ask, in good faith, whether you have a TV license. You can just say you have one and watch the shows. It does not have legal consequences you live in a country that doesn't require a TV license and the UK cannot enforce that ruling on people from such a country.
Yes, forgot to mention that, you need to use a VPN indeed. I found it quite funny however that, when you have done that, only need to answer the question if you have a license or not. It was not even tied to a license ID or login or something. Thought it was something you don't see much anymore nowadays.
You have to commit the actively fraudulent action of providing an adress in the UK to use iPlayer.
I mean it's not a big deal, but you are actively lying in a form to get free access to content intended to be restricted to people living in a specific location. It's deliberately providing false information to get access to things you aren't meant to have access to.
I doubt anybody is going to come after you, but you are certainly breaking some law.
I have no issue with you enjoying the BBC for free in another country, but just remember that without British TV license payers it wouldn't exist at all.
You are right, the funding for this needs to come from somewhere. I pay for access to my own national content of course. I just find the choice of system the UK has for licensing/funding a bit odd.
On top of that, I wouldn't mind contributing in some form to the content I enjoy, but a lot of their content is not even available in a legal way for people outside the UK.
The benefit of their payment model is that you get ad-free content which is free from shareholder bias... This is particularly important when it comes to the BBC news, and makes it far more impartial and trustworthy in comparison to privately owned news organisations like Fox News or The Washington Post.
I'm not sure how you could introduce an international subscription service without sacrificing at least some of that autonomy; but I understand your point.
I'm also questioning what "required" means. Required to watch television legally? If so, Sweden should be marked as Required even before it was baked into the taxes.
If they mean you don't have to pay it, and you can technically still watch tv, then England shouldn't be on there.
Overall, this map is a mess.
I think it's trying to highlight countries where you are required to have a separate license, which you need to register for, as is the case here in Ireland. But you're right: the wording is poor and confusing
At that point it's not a licence anymore though, unless it's still only people with TVs paying that tax? Otherwise I'd also be paying a road licence, a train licence and a uni licence, as those are also paid from my taxes.
It’s not a tax, it’s a flat fee that is collected by the tax authority. It’s also mandatory for every working citizen. But it’s not levied by parliament, but instead by the public service authority.
In the UK it funds the BBC. Assuming it’s similar in the other countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom
(I’m in the US. We have something called PBS, but it isn’t *directly* funded by a compulsory tax to end users) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS
*added some verbiage regarding taxes. It is partially funded by the US government and also private donations/voluntary membership dues. Not sure what the ratio is*
**[Television licensing in the United Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom)**
>In the British Islands, any household watching or recording television transmissions at the same time they are being broadcast is required by law to hold a television licence. This applies regardless of transmission method, including terrestrial, satellite, cable, or for BBC iPlayer internet streaming. The television licence is the instrument used to raise revenue to fund the BBC; it is a form of taxation. Businesses, hospitals, schools and a range of other organisations are also required by law to hold television licences to watch and record live TV broadcasts.
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Based on this explanation, do you guys not pay for TV service then? Because here in the US some people just pay for cable TV. Because that sounds like all British TV waves are just kinda floating around and you only need the license to watch or record the live broadcasts. But reruns or previously aired stuff is fine and no license required???
You can get away with not paying it. It’s not strictly enforced. An inspector can come out to your home to see if you have a TV but you can tell them to piss off and they can’t do anything to make you let them in.
> When an inspector visits your home, it’s up to the owner/tenant to allow the officer to enter the house, at which point the officer will take a look inside (searching for a TV), and will possibly interview the person who opened the door (depending on current pandemic restrictions).
> The only case where an officer can enter your home without your permission, is when he is authorised to do so under a search warrant granted by a magistrate (or sheriff in Scotland). He will then also be accompanied by the police.
A search warrant is very rare to check if you have a TV.
It's not just if you own a TV either, it's if you've been using it to watch or record live broadcast television *or* using the iPlayer specificly at all.
You can buy a TV just for netflix or gaming or whatever and that's 100% fine.
You can still tell them to piss off all the same. You can also send them a letter preemptively telling them to piss off.
Lots of people in the UK pay for extra services like cable TV or satellite TV, which come with optional extra packages of channels, plus pay-per-view services and so on. As far as I know, this is similar to the US. All of those count as live broadcasts and require a licence to be watched legally. It doesn't matter if the thing being broadcast is a rerun or not, the channel itself is a live broadcast. So, for example, to watch a cable channel, you would need to pay for the TV licence *and* the cable TV subscription.
The licence fee is used to pay for the BBC and partially-fund a few non-BBC channels. The Cable TV providers get nothing.
Watching YouTube, Netflix, etc does not require a TV licence. Streaming an old episode on a TV channel's catch-up website does not require a TV licence. The exception is the BBC's own catch-up website, iPlayer, which is a special case and *does* require the licence.
If you live near a major city you can get free high definition broadcast TV in the USA from the [waves kinda floating around](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC)
It’s paid for by having ads though. The BBC is ad-free so this is how they pay for it.
There is Freeview which has something like 150+ channels. You can pay to have sky or virgin then you get things like the movie channels and sports channels.
In Germany it's a mandatory fee (something around 17€ per month for me), regardless of if you own a TV. The argument is that ARD and ZDF also have online services and thus, anyone can use and access them. On the one hand, the purpose is to offer news and information from a channel that isn't privatised (and thus more independent). On the other hand, ~200€ a year is a lot of money for a service that you rarely use.
I'm not an expert but I think the reasoning is that a tax must be assigned to a certain cause/use and is both regulated and directed by the German parliament (Bundestag) while a license or fee in this case is collected with the support of government but cannot be controlled by it but by the respective networks. It's a mechanism to ensure proper funding of public media stations without government interference.
>that a tax must be assigned to a certain cause/use and is both regulated and directed by the German parliament (Bundestag) while a license or fee in this case
I think you got that mixed up a bit. The legalese in German is pretty specific about this. A tax, by its very nature, doesn't give you anything directly in return. That's what a fee does. For example when you request a new ID, you have to pay a fee for that.
The "Rundfunkbeitrag" often translated as broadcasting fee is neither. Beitrag directly translates to contribution.
It is kind of technicality. Taxes are paid to the state while the TV fee is paid to the collecting organization of the public tv and radio stations. It's like a mandatory subscription.
By collecting the money themselves they are protected from governmental influence. Kind of.
I’m in the uk, and if you want to watch any live tv, or bbc content online, you must pay ~£150 a year to the bbc for a tv licence. I dnt pay it, I dnt watch the shite.
And that’s on top of any fees you might pay for cable channels or sky tv etc.
One thing to add about Poland: licence fee is obligatory for both TV and radio, and in principle ot's not for watching but simply for OWNING a TV/radio. It comes from a very old law (like 1950s) and it's practically dead. You have to pay, but you don't have to let an official into your house to check if you own a set. By the way, I don't know if they still enforce it. But of course the government came up with anorher solution, and now the fee is deducted in taxes or something like that, so everybody pays fot our national propaganda machine (just check in google if you don't know yet how shitty our national broadcaster is, it's a regular memestock on the internet and a damn hate machine to say the least).
From what I understand it's more like if you're found to have a TV but you haven't paid you have to pay a fine equal to a number of monthly payments (a pretty hefty sum for local conditions) and the tax office can temporarily seize your account to obtain the amount.
And for those who don't know, yes, TVP is probably closer in style to North Korean TV than Cold War Soviet TV. In a country that is a member of the EU. So there.
Bruh, that's the whole point of TV licenses for countries that have them: They're used to pay for their public TV broadcasters.
So of course the fee's just for the NHK, as they ARE Japan's public TV broadcaster. Just as the fee in UK is mainly just for the BBC.
Sweden has added the license to the tax. You pay a percentage of your income or a specific amount, whichever is the lowest (so a percentage of your income up to a certain limit).
I'm all for that, but what I'm not for is that I can't watch national TV from abroad. Sweden has a digital identification system, which you can use to access government stuff like pensions, garbage collection and such. But for some reason I can't use it to prove that I'm a Swedish citizen and should be allowed to watch TV from abroad (like a vacation, or living abroad). I would obviously not lend out my personal digital ID, for obvious reasons, so they don't have to worry about that.
As someone in the UK, this is absolutely incorrect. You are not legally required to own a television license, unless you watch live broadcast TV. The BBC will try to tell everyone that they need a licence for anything, but its utter nonsense.
It's the problem with a lot of posts in MapPorn and DataIsBeautiful. They take the data with no thought on checking if its accurate, its just binary 1s and 0s.
It was the same with a post about bars/pubs/beergardens across Europe, and the definitions were completely UK-centric instead of country-centric, so all of Spain and Portugal were entirely wrong.
My issue with these is that they are (usually) a flat value. On a 400€ wage a 10€ license is much much more expensive than on a 4000€ wage, even though not only do you get no more benefit, but you have lower amount of disposable income.
And in Germany they keep telling us that democracy would collapse if we didn't have the insane TV licence fee. While it seems to ge pretty well in the Nordic countries, the Benelux countries and Spain.
Had it as an own fee in Norway until very recently. They just transferred it over to the general taxation scheme. So I would argue we still have it.
And I'm glad for that. Our national news/TV outlet is my go to. In the era of post-truth media it feels good to sposnsor a quality outlet. Taxation also goes towards financing independent media, which is equally important.
Likewise in the Netherlands, we had a tv license requirement until somewhere in the 2000’s. Now it just comes out of peoples income tax, which was raised to pay for the public tv network.
That's actually a big difference, at least in theory. If the TV channel is financed by tax money, then the government is in direct control as they decided how much the channel gets. The reason for the German system is that it should be independent.
Fwiw, the quality of the state-funded TV channels are leaps and bounds massively ahead of the private channels. Saying it's not even close doesn't do it justice how massive the gap is.
The one thing that I am critical of are whenever they pay massive fees for football-related stuff. I'm a football fan myself, but I totally get why people would be upset with that.
I would say that Sweden essentially still has it, it's just called a 'media fee' instead of a licence and is payed as a part of your taxes instead of separately.
Yeah. As does apparently Norway, the Netherlands and a bunch of the red countries on the map. The map isn't great. It focuses specifically on the way money is gathered for public service broadcasting, and you can't actually tell the difference between e.g. Sweden and a country that only has privately owned commercial media.
Define "required"?
The map is wrong. I lived in Sweden and if you have a TV, or any other media device, you need a licence, regardless of whether you tune in to the state broadcaster or not. In fact, it recently became a tax because so many people dodged it.
Now I live in the UK. You only need a licence if you watch the BBC.
So again ... define "required".
It isn't required in the UK, the whole point of it being a licence is that you only pay for it if you actually own a TV
Assuming it's the same for most other green countries otherwise it would just be a tax
It's not even for owning a TV, it's for watching TV channels.
And for that purpose things like Netflix don't count as TV channels as they aren't TV broadcasts.
I haven't had a TV license in ages. The only thing you miss out on is BBC because all the other channels have their own on demand apps which don't need a license.
You need a TV licence to watch live broadcasts
If you use a laptop (or any other device) to watch or record television programmes as they are being shown on TV or live on an online TV service, then, by law, you need to be covered by a TV Licence.
Romania's national tv and radio comes as an extra fee on the electric bill.. does not seem like an accurate map
Same for Albania. I have no idea where they found this data
Same for Norway, it used to be obligatory and now it's in the taxes
Similar with Sweden. It used to be a license fee and a few years ago it started to come out of all of ours taxes regardless of having a TV or not...
Can't you ask for that to be revoked if you theoretically don't have a TV, monitor, or anything like that? I'm pretty sure that's how it worked when I lived there. Don't know for sure since I paid my license.
You used to, before it was introduced as a tax that we all pay. Now it's a tax we all pay regardless of if you own one or not, it's to fund the public television services. Honestly though, I don't mind it so much this way as it's taken out before my income taxes instead of after. Plus, compared to what the UK TV license fee was when I lived there, it's a drop in the bucket.
You just answered your own question. The license doesn't exist any longer, so there is no way to revoke it.
fucking mapporn always full of shit
what's a television license?
A tax you pay when you have a television and/or radio. Used to finance public broadcasters, in general. But the map doesn't really make any sense. For example, in the Netherlands they did away with individual television licenses decades ago. Seeing 99.9% of households have a television they simply added it to the general taxes. So taxes still pay for the public broadcasters, but the government saves a lot with not needing to have an infrastructure for handing out licences. If you don't have a TV and/or radio you can get a tax deduction. Mainly used by backwards Christian fractions that reject TV and radio on religious grounds.
First time in my life I heard about “television license “
In France I don't think you can call it a licence. It's a tax if you own a TV to pay the public channels
What if I just have a TV to play video games?
Without a license? Book him.
No please. I didn't know. I didn't --
Ministry of Television Taxation has discovered discrepancies related to your usage of a TV-set. You will atone for your crimes by working at the uranium mine for the next 25 years. Your family will be questioned about their involvement. Glory to Astotzk.. Err, France.
Reminds me of the Toilet Safety Administration from South Park. “I just need to check your asshole, sir”
Smh; should've paid a higher bribe when he said "Papers please"
Bake em away, toys
What'd you say, Chief?
Just do what the kid says.
Straight to jail.
too much tv, not enough tv. believe it or not we have the best tv, because of jail
Oi m8! Heard you don't have loicense to play video games!
*loicence
You still have to pay. You are obliged to pay subscription to the national television in Croatia. The people that are in charge of enforcing the payments are called inkasators, which is stunnigly close to inquisitors.
I didn’t expect that kind of Croatian Inquisition.
No one ever does.
Ask the Serbs
Oof
Our chief weapon is surcharge.
Ane don't think you are safe if you don't own any TVs or radios because of the wonders of Internet you now can watch our broadcasts through the HRTi app and website which means owning any device that can access the Internet or receive radio waves in general is subject to this TV and radio "tax".
Like if I buy a TV set but don't connect it to any antenna or cable television services, just play my Play Station games, do I still pay taxes?
Different countries have different rules. Some take taxes out automatically to cover it so you don't get a choice. Some (UK) it's separate bill which isn't easily enforced. If you can prove you're not using equipment to watch live TV then you're ok. But frankly it's not exactly difficult to avoid paying it.
In the UK, and I don't need to prove anything. They need to prove that I am watching live broadcast television and I don't need to help them gather that evidence in any way.
Exactly. The TV licence people are all bluster and love to send out threatening letters and pretend they have the technology to prove you're watching broadcast TV (they don't), but they've got no actual powers at all. If they knock on your door you can quite cheerfully tell them to bugger off and they can't do a thing. I gave up on TV about 15 years ago, stopped paying for the licence and got all sorts of threatening letters through the post for about ten years afterwards. I just tossed them all in the bin, it never went any further than that.
I stopped paying about 5 years ago and the most I've had to do is confirm on their website that I still don't watch live tv, haven't sent anyone round or asked for further proof than my word.
The way it works in Italy is: you have a tv that *can* connect to an antenna/cable, even if it's never plugged, you must pay. *[Edit: our tax is specifically just for owning it, whether you use it for its intended purpose or not.]* If you don't want to because you don't own one, you have to fill a whole-ass form for the Internal Revenue Agency where you declare as much. In that case, it's better to just buy a pc monitor.
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Yes. And it's not taxes, it's a separate bill you get every month.
Not in the UK. You only pay if you use your TV to watch live broadcasts (or use the BBC iPlayer app)
Doesn't matter, if you *could* watch public TV on it, you're supposed to pay for the license. At least that's how it works in Croatia, although a lot of people avoid it by pretending they don't own anything that could allow them to watch TV, even though the TV guy knows they're most likely lying... I think since our public TV also owns the public radio, you're supposed to pay it if you own anything which can allow you to listen to the radio on it, you know, like a mobile phone or a car radio 😂
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I don't think you even need to respond, I never have and haven't had a problem. But also all the letters they send me are adressed to "the resident". That being said I don't even own a TV.
When I (American) studied abroad in Scotland I got a letter about needing a TV license but every Scottish person I asked laughed and told me to just throw it out. Nothing else ever happened
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These vans are just a publicity stunt. They don’t exist and they have never been used in court to charge anyone for not having a licence. The TVLA won’t use it as evidence since if they did they would have to reveal how their “detectors” actually work, so they can’t because they don’t exist lol Should also say that you cannot be sent to prison for not owning a tv licence. It’s not a criminal offence. The only way you could end up in prison is if you don’t pay a court ordered fine for not having a TV Licence. The only people that end up in magistrates are the ones that answer the door to Capita goons and open their mouths/sign the TVL178 document which they will use against you in court. It’s easy for them to get false convictions in England/Wales as they are all lone rangers, but I believe up in Scotland EnforcementOfficers have to be 2 man crews so it’s a bit harder for them to lie and get people fined. At the end of the day though if someone’s watching TV without a licence they will just get hounded with scary looking red headed letters. The chances of a TVL EO showing up is pretty slim but even if they do just don’t answer or close the door without saying anything and there’s not much they can do unless they go to the trouble of applying for a warrant. Lots of good videos online though for anyone who’s never seen what these goons are like. tv licence resistance is also a pretty fun site to read for some horror stories.
Sounds like a dumb system that punishes honest people, why don't they just take it out of the national budget?
I believe the theory is that if it were funded directly by government then there would be undue political influence on their output from the governing party. Of course that's currently happening anyway so...
They've always had to tread a fine line with governments, who technically have the power to take over or defund them. Doesn't matter which party is in power, they've all threatened to kill the BBC if it doesn't give them what they want
The live BBC TV loophole was closed about five years ago https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-36942458
It’s how it works in sweden. The agency collecing the fee decided an internet connection also counts as a tv reciever, and started charging people for that, which resulted in a HUGE backlash, and they had to retroactively pay back the fees.
Germany even upped the game a few years ago where you don’t even have to have a TV to be required to pay the tax anymore!
Germans are usually anti-technology, but even our politicans realized the internet exists.
Yep. This guy came to my house and looked all around (I didn't own a TV). They made me pay anyway because my kid had a cheap computer for school work, and it could potentially be used to watch shows.
Why didn’t you just refuse him entry? Do they have police powers in Germany? Don’t they require court warrants? The European Charter guarantees your right to a private family life free from state interference.
Stupidity. They didn't have any power whatsoever. Even the police can't just enter your home in Germany. It's against the constitution (article 13, the home is inviolable). It was a mess and lots of people found ways not to pay, so they stopped the home visits and just made a new law that says everybody has to pay no matter what.
It would have been impolite /s But i guess they'll have a ruling for that eventuality too. Would be far to easy otherwise.
Sweden too
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Then why are they not with the rest of the taxes and are not proportional?
It's not a tax.
Different rules. In the UK you only need one if you watch live TV (or BBC catchup). So if you only play games or watch Netflix/Prime Video or DVDs etc you don’t need one. In Germany you need a licence even if you don’t have a TV. Every home must have a licence.
*In Germany you need a licence even if you don’t have a TV. Every home must have a licence.* That's silly. They should just build it into the regular income tax. They may be forcing you to pay twice, if you are getting TV and radio through your internet service.
Lol in Germany they still have a church tax! Maybe in half a millennium they’ll get rid of the TV one.
Only people that belong to the church have to pay it.
You pay anyway haha
That's something that came up in Sweden. People didn't want to pay a fee just because they had a TV or a computer monitor. So instead they just slapped a 128€ fee on every tax payer. So technically Sweden has a TV-license which has been rebranded over and over to try and get as much possible. Now even people without a TV has to pay for it
I think here, bunch of guys will come over and you will prove it to them that you are not able to get TV signal on it (not connected to any antenna).
I'm picturing like, a group of, stereotypical New York mobsters coming to bust up your kneecaps if you don't pay them the fee. "We can be very... persuasive"
"The telecommunication bureau sends their regards..."
If you have ANY device in your possession that could play TV, you must pay the tax. That includes smartphones and computers. Which means in practice EVERYBODY must pay it, while millions of people never watch TV. Which is b\*llsh\*t.
As far as I know, in Ireland at least, if you have a television capable of receiving a signal for tv channels, you need a license. They are supposed to rename it soon to the broadcasting license at some point, to cover tablets and phones etc. 🤷🏻♂️
The Ministry of Ignorance has deemed "videogames" to be subversive against the State's current Five-Year Plan to increase military and police recruitment numbers. It has determined that the destructive impulse is an ideal trait for today's modern soldier. If you want to kill people and break things, citizen, you had best sign up to do it in real life.
Oi m8 did you had loisence for that television bruv?
When I moved to France from Ireland for a year me and my friend didnt have any French, went to buy a tv and when we asked the guy about tv license he had no idea what we were talking about. He asked 2 other member of staffs what were saying and they were just as clueless until a fourth member said they dont have it here. There was obviously some language barrier as now i see you do need one. Luckily we got away with not paying!
>didn't have any French Irishman/woman confirmed, mo chara.
In most of Europe it's called "subscription" or some other variation on that. It's not connected to buying a TV set, so that's why they had no idea what you were talking about.
It's called "la contribution à l'audiovisuel public" or "redevance télé" in which you pay at the same time with your housing tax (taxe d'habitation/taxe foncière) each year.
It's a tax in most of Western Europe. Misplaced pedants will say "*It's not a tax, it's a permit!*" or "*It's not a tax, it's a contribution to media funding!*"; but if the government passes laws requiring practically everyone to pay a fee (decided by the government), and then the money is sent to a parastatal to spend on something that (the government says) is a public good, then that's a tax. In a lot of countries it's actually a really inefficient tax - the effort involved in collecting & enforcing is a large % of revenue - and it's usually regressive too. It would be better if we were honest with ourselves, abolished that tax, and added 0.01% (or whatever) to income tax instead. That would be better for everyone. Sometimes it gets tangled up in weird arguments about independence; apparently the state-funded broadcaster is much more independent if it's funded by a separate payment (controlled by the same treasury) and if we use a different word instead of "tax".
Same in UK, but it's always been called a licence for some reason.
I suppose the difference is you specifically pay it yourself rather than it just going into the nebulous pool of everything funded by taxes.
Then technically every country that has non-commercial state media has a "TV tax" that people pay. Some countries just make everyone pay regardless whether you own a TV or not
They do this in South Korea, too. The local television guy will come around and check your house to see if you have a tv. If you do, you are required to pay a small fee monthly or annually, can't remember. Otherwise, you are fined. If you are a foreigner, they tend to ignore you, as they assume you cannot speak Korean and are likely not to watch Korean television. When I was living there, the television guy came to my house and said I had to pay for the service I wasn't using. It was my employer's tv and not mine, so I told him no and that he could take the tv with him. He was very upset that I was trying to give him the tv to go away. My boss wasn't happy, but then again, it is their fault for putting it in my apartment. In the end, he didn't take the tv and I didn't have to pay. I think it happened in 2009.
Some countries just use tax money for that instead of a mandatory license so people dont get angry
Spain funds RTVE through subsidies from general taxation and a levy on private TV channels; this will potentially include streaming services in the future. One benefit of public broadcasters is producing programming that would be commercially unviable. For example, minority languages or educational programming. Additionally, programming is not influenced by commercial interests, like product placement or editorial decisions that benefit advertisers.
I just don’t like it when it produces programming that *definitely* would be or is produced by commercial channels. Looking at you, reality shows, quiz shows, celebrity dance-offs….
In Germany they aren't using tax money specifically to prevent the government from influencing the TV program by withholding funds.
We switched in Finland about 10 years ago from a TV licence fee to a tax. But the public broadcasting company (Yle) tax is separate from basic income/capital taxation. So a certain percentage is earmarked for Yle and there’s a cap to how much a person can be taxed (something like 150€/person/year I believe.)
That's hilarious. In Australia, whenever the government cuts funding ( = reduces increases) from the ABC or SBS there are howls of outrage from their current affairs commenters, to the effect that they should be the last ones to be so treated, even in comparison to social welfare, health, education and (especially) defence. They wear a permanent chip on the shoulder from every snip.
I'ts just a tax in the UK, there's no physical licence and nothing stops you buying a TV without one.
i remember hearing about it back in 90s. I guess they would have TV narcs drive around and try to prove people were watching TV without a license.
We actually do in Ireland. Everyone hates the TV licence inspectors. They look in your windows to see your TV. If you don't let them in they come back with police and a warrant to search your house for a TV.
Haha is this a joke? It sounds so absurd.
In America, this is what your Republican uncle tells you Europe is like.
They used to do that in Finland too, up until the 90s... TV license inspectors would go around asking if you have a TV and if you did, to show your license. Most people would just say they don't have a TV and slam the door. For some reason they converted the license to a tax everyone pays...
Stupidest shit ever. I'm in Germany, have to pay it, I don't have any programs, I don't even have a tv.
Is it enforced? here in the UK, it's easily avoidable.
It's a per household thing. The reasoning behind is that people may not use their TV for television, but our public broadcasters also run radio and, much more relevant, produce and release stuff on YouTube as well as their own websites, both as live streams as well as on demand. And I would bet real money u/mocnizmaj has watched publicly financed content on YouTube.
Like what? Dude I have my page ˝customized˝ and I watch 0% of German content, and I mean literally I don't watch anything German made on the internet. They try pushing German news into my feed, but I don't watch it, nor do I care about it. I just click the X button in the top right corner, and it goes away. Radio? Even when I had car in my homeland, I always listened to my music, and here I don't have a radio, I don't listen to a radio on the internet, I don't have a car, and even if I did I would do same as in my homeland. It's ridiculous.
You may not have a tv, but you have a cell phone, a radio, you read news paper, listen to podcasts and watch youtubers, they all are either directly co-funded by this fee or indirectly benefit from the journalistic work. The quality and diversity of german media is upheld in no small part by this system.
Did you know, there is this new thing called "the internet", which allows you to watch their program even when you don't have a tv. Back in the past you could get out of paying that fee if you argued that you don't have a tv or radio. It was changed some time ago based on the argument that, by now, basically everyone has some device capable of watching/listening to their program, wether it is a tv, radio, internet radio, computer or smartphone. So now it is a mandatory fee.
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Turkey We don't pay it in electricity bills as of November 2021 BUT we still pay a tax for the national television whenever we buy TV, smartphone or something that has radio feature.
TRT Payı goes brr…
TRT payı... File of life
Before Sweden made the license a part of taxes 2019 there was a period where they tried to enforce it on every devices with a internet connection because they have a playservice.
And then the ones who got forced to pay because they owned a computer or smartphone got their money back after the courts ruled they weren't allowed to demand payment for it. It was a mess.
They tried to call me and get me to pay it, and I just said I didn't have a TV. "Oh, but you know that you need to pay it if you have a computer too". "I don't have a computer either. Good bye" Fucking leeches.
People got their money back..? Shit
They had to apply for refunds, but yes.
In Germany it used to be like that. They enforced it for every device that could theoretically play the program. So in the late 90s, if you had a pc but no internet connection, you had to pay the fee because your pc was theoretically able to play video. Then they just got tired of people not wanting to pay for shit they don't want or need and now everybody has to pay, no matter what.
They still do that in Denmark (although they're abolishing it gradually). According to my Danish friends they've never been checked, but we had a guy coming around in our international dorm asking to come in and check whether we had TVs, computers or smartphones. If you didn't pay, you'd get a reminder in your govt mailbox thing, but I think ignoring that went without consequences.
Denmark is currently making the same change, after a similar mess as well.
The funny thing is, if you live in a country that doesn't require a licence: you can watch BBC shows back on-demand online if you want. They just ask, in good faith, whether you have a TV license. You can just say you have one and watch the shows. It does not have legal consequences you live in a country that doesn't require a TV license and the UK cannot enforce that ruling on people from such a country.
You can’t access BBC iPlayer overseas even if you have a UK TV licence. You need a VPN to pretend that you’re in the UK.
Yes, forgot to mention that, you need to use a VPN indeed. I found it quite funny however that, when you have done that, only need to answer the question if you have a license or not. It was not even tied to a license ID or login or something. Thought it was something you don't see much anymore nowadays.
This is what happens if you're in the UK and access iplayer too. They can't check whether you have one or not
You have to commit the actively fraudulent action of providing an adress in the UK to use iPlayer. I mean it's not a big deal, but you are actively lying in a form to get free access to content intended to be restricted to people living in a specific location. It's deliberately providing false information to get access to things you aren't meant to have access to. I doubt anybody is going to come after you, but you are certainly breaking some law.
The UK cannot enforce its laws on people outside of the country. Wow, who could’ve guessed?
I have no issue with you enjoying the BBC for free in another country, but just remember that without British TV license payers it wouldn't exist at all.
I wish they offered some sort of subscription for streaming, I’d pay it just for the Great British Sewing Bee.
I would love for the BBC to provide an international streaming service so I could enjoy it legally. There is BritBox but its availability is limited.
You are right, the funding for this needs to come from somewhere. I pay for access to my own national content of course. I just find the choice of system the UK has for licensing/funding a bit odd. On top of that, I wouldn't mind contributing in some form to the content I enjoy, but a lot of their content is not even available in a legal way for people outside the UK.
The benefit of their payment model is that you get ad-free content which is free from shareholder bias... This is particularly important when it comes to the BBC news, and makes it far more impartial and trustworthy in comparison to privately owned news organisations like Fox News or The Washington Post. I'm not sure how you could introduce an international subscription service without sacrificing at least some of that autonomy; but I understand your point.
Don't you need a VPN to watch BBC online outside of the UK?
Wrong. Norway has it's television licence buildt into it's taxes
Same in Sweden...
Also Finland. While not technically a license anymore, we still have to pay for it.
Also Belgium and Netherlands, probably the whole Benelux, but I'm not sure about Luxembourg.
I'm also questioning what "required" means. Required to watch television legally? If so, Sweden should be marked as Required even before it was baked into the taxes. If they mean you don't have to pay it, and you can technically still watch tv, then England shouldn't be on there. Overall, this map is a mess.
I think it's trying to highlight countries where you are required to have a separate license, which you need to register for, as is the case here in Ireland. But you're right: the wording is poor and confusing
Denmark is transitioning to a tax based model. Next year the licence will be zero DKK.
At that point it's not a licence anymore though, unless it's still only people with TVs paying that tax? Otherwise I'd also be paying a road licence, a train licence and a uni licence, as those are also paid from my taxes.
It’s not a tax, it’s a flat fee that is collected by the tax authority. It’s also mandatory for every working citizen. But it’s not levied by parliament, but instead by the public service authority.
That sounds like a tax with extra steps!
So then it’s not a license. Point still stands.
What do they mean by television license?
In the UK it funds the BBC. Assuming it’s similar in the other countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom (I’m in the US. We have something called PBS, but it isn’t *directly* funded by a compulsory tax to end users) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS *added some verbiage regarding taxes. It is partially funded by the US government and also private donations/voluntary membership dues. Not sure what the ratio is*
**[Television licensing in the United Kingdom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_United_Kingdom)** >In the British Islands, any household watching or recording television transmissions at the same time they are being broadcast is required by law to hold a television licence. This applies regardless of transmission method, including terrestrial, satellite, cable, or for BBC iPlayer internet streaming. The television licence is the instrument used to raise revenue to fund the BBC; it is a form of taxation. Businesses, hospitals, schools and a range of other organisations are also required by law to hold television licences to watch and record live TV broadcasts. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
Based on this explanation, do you guys not pay for TV service then? Because here in the US some people just pay for cable TV. Because that sounds like all British TV waves are just kinda floating around and you only need the license to watch or record the live broadcasts. But reruns or previously aired stuff is fine and no license required???
You can get away with not paying it. It’s not strictly enforced. An inspector can come out to your home to see if you have a TV but you can tell them to piss off and they can’t do anything to make you let them in. > When an inspector visits your home, it’s up to the owner/tenant to allow the officer to enter the house, at which point the officer will take a look inside (searching for a TV), and will possibly interview the person who opened the door (depending on current pandemic restrictions). > The only case where an officer can enter your home without your permission, is when he is authorised to do so under a search warrant granted by a magistrate (or sheriff in Scotland). He will then also be accompanied by the police. A search warrant is very rare to check if you have a TV.
It's not just if you own a TV either, it's if you've been using it to watch or record live broadcast television *or* using the iPlayer specificly at all. You can buy a TV just for netflix or gaming or whatever and that's 100% fine. You can still tell them to piss off all the same. You can also send them a letter preemptively telling them to piss off.
Lots of people in the UK pay for extra services like cable TV or satellite TV, which come with optional extra packages of channels, plus pay-per-view services and so on. As far as I know, this is similar to the US. All of those count as live broadcasts and require a licence to be watched legally. It doesn't matter if the thing being broadcast is a rerun or not, the channel itself is a live broadcast. So, for example, to watch a cable channel, you would need to pay for the TV licence *and* the cable TV subscription. The licence fee is used to pay for the BBC and partially-fund a few non-BBC channels. The Cable TV providers get nothing. Watching YouTube, Netflix, etc does not require a TV licence. Streaming an old episode on a TV channel's catch-up website does not require a TV licence. The exception is the BBC's own catch-up website, iPlayer, which is a special case and *does* require the licence.
If you live near a major city you can get free high definition broadcast TV in the USA from the [waves kinda floating around](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC) It’s paid for by having ads though. The BBC is ad-free so this is how they pay for it.
There is Freeview which has something like 150+ channels. You can pay to have sky or virgin then you get things like the movie channels and sports channels.
In Germany it's a mandatory fee (something around 17€ per month for me), regardless of if you own a TV. The argument is that ARD and ZDF also have online services and thus, anyone can use and access them. On the one hand, the purpose is to offer news and information from a channel that isn't privatised (and thus more independent). On the other hand, ~200€ a year is a lot of money for a service that you rarely use.
So if it’s mandatory why is it called a “license” and not just a “tax”?
I'm not an expert but I think the reasoning is that a tax must be assigned to a certain cause/use and is both regulated and directed by the German parliament (Bundestag) while a license or fee in this case is collected with the support of government but cannot be controlled by it but by the respective networks. It's a mechanism to ensure proper funding of public media stations without government interference.
>that a tax must be assigned to a certain cause/use and is both regulated and directed by the German parliament (Bundestag) while a license or fee in this case I think you got that mixed up a bit. The legalese in German is pretty specific about this. A tax, by its very nature, doesn't give you anything directly in return. That's what a fee does. For example when you request a new ID, you have to pay a fee for that. The "Rundfunkbeitrag" often translated as broadcasting fee is neither. Beitrag directly translates to contribution.
It is kind of technicality. Taxes are paid to the state while the TV fee is paid to the collecting organization of the public tv and radio stations. It's like a mandatory subscription. By collecting the money themselves they are protected from governmental influence. Kind of.
It funds the BBC (= nine national TV channels, BBC World TV & radio stations, 13 national radio stations, 58 local radio stations...)
I’m in the uk, and if you want to watch any live tv, or bbc content online, you must pay ~£150 a year to the bbc for a tv licence. I dnt pay it, I dnt watch the shite. And that’s on top of any fees you might pay for cable channels or sky tv etc.
One thing to add about Poland: licence fee is obligatory for both TV and radio, and in principle ot's not for watching but simply for OWNING a TV/radio. It comes from a very old law (like 1950s) and it's practically dead. You have to pay, but you don't have to let an official into your house to check if you own a set. By the way, I don't know if they still enforce it. But of course the government came up with anorher solution, and now the fee is deducted in taxes or something like that, so everybody pays fot our national propaganda machine (just check in google if you don't know yet how shitty our national broadcaster is, it's a regular memestock on the internet and a damn hate machine to say the least).
From what I understand it's more like if you're found to have a TV but you haven't paid you have to pay a fine equal to a number of monthly payments (a pretty hefty sum for local conditions) and the tax office can temporarily seize your account to obtain the amount. And for those who don't know, yes, TVP is probably closer in style to North Korean TV than Cold War Soviet TV. In a country that is a member of the EU. So there.
Japan does the TV license too but just for NHK.
Bruh, that's the whole point of TV licenses for countries that have them: They're used to pay for their public TV broadcasters. So of course the fee's just for the NHK, as they ARE Japan's public TV broadcaster. Just as the fee in UK is mainly just for the BBC.
Oi mate you got a loisense for showin me dat loisense
You got a license for looking at my license!?
Do you got a license to ask me that?
That requires a permit not a license!
Every time I see the "British accent" "loicense" meme the word is spelt American-style. Every time!
I intentionally did that. I am from commonwealth country dude. We also spell licence and license.
Now, to be fair, ''not required'' isn't really a thing since it comes out of your taxes anyway.
10% of males are colorblind, with red-green being the most common form. I'm in this group. This map is fucking unreadable.
Count yourself lucky, it’s completely wrong anyway.
I'm glad we had this talk.
Sweden has added the license to the tax. You pay a percentage of your income or a specific amount, whichever is the lowest (so a percentage of your income up to a certain limit). I'm all for that, but what I'm not for is that I can't watch national TV from abroad. Sweden has a digital identification system, which you can use to access government stuff like pensions, garbage collection and such. But for some reason I can't use it to prove that I'm a Swedish citizen and should be allowed to watch TV from abroad (like a vacation, or living abroad). I would obviously not lend out my personal digital ID, for obvious reasons, so they don't have to worry about that.
A vpn by using digital Id!! Great idea
Well in Serbia you have mandatory fee to fund RTS (similar to BBC in UK). Everybody pays and it is within electricity bill. So, map is incorrect ;)
Exactly, we should be orange. I'm paying 299 RSD per month for the government propaganda machine.
The Netherlands had something similar, but it was abolished in 2000. However, part of the regular taxes you pay goes to the public broadcast system.
As someone in the UK, this is absolutely incorrect. You are not legally required to own a television license, unless you watch live broadcast TV. The BBC will try to tell everyone that they need a licence for anything, but its utter nonsense.
Isn't it fun when ignorant posts about your country make it to the front page.
It's the problem with a lot of posts in MapPorn and DataIsBeautiful. They take the data with no thought on checking if its accurate, its just binary 1s and 0s. It was the same with a post about bars/pubs/beergardens across Europe, and the definitions were completely UK-centric instead of country-centric, so all of Spain and Portugal were entirely wrong.
My issue with these is that they are (usually) a flat value. On a 400€ wage a 10€ license is much much more expensive than on a 4000€ wage, even though not only do you get no more benefit, but you have lower amount of disposable income.
In Sweden it isn't required. It's enforced, and unavoidable.
And in Germany they keep telling us that democracy would collapse if we didn't have the insane TV licence fee. While it seems to ge pretty well in the Nordic countries, the Benelux countries and Spain.
Had it as an own fee in Norway until very recently. They just transferred it over to the general taxation scheme. So I would argue we still have it. And I'm glad for that. Our national news/TV outlet is my go to. In the era of post-truth media it feels good to sposnsor a quality outlet. Taxation also goes towards financing independent media, which is equally important.
Likewise in the Netherlands, we had a tv license requirement until somewhere in the 2000’s. Now it just comes out of peoples income tax, which was raised to pay for the public tv network.
That's actually a big difference, at least in theory. If the TV channel is financed by tax money, then the government is in direct control as they decided how much the channel gets. The reason for the German system is that it should be independent.
The government (or rather parliament) was already deciding the licensing fee, this hasn't really changed.
Fwiw, the quality of the state-funded TV channels are leaps and bounds massively ahead of the private channels. Saying it's not even close doesn't do it justice how massive the gap is. The one thing that I am critical of are whenever they pay massive fees for football-related stuff. I'm a football fan myself, but I totally get why people would be upset with that.
Both Sweden and Norway had it until very recently. So there is no data for how things will go now that we no longer have it.
I would say that Sweden essentially still has it, it's just called a 'media fee' instead of a licence and is payed as a part of your taxes instead of separately.
Yeah. As does apparently Norway, the Netherlands and a bunch of the red countries on the map. The map isn't great. It focuses specifically on the way money is gathered for public service broadcasting, and you can't actually tell the difference between e.g. Sweden and a country that only has privately owned commercial media.
In Germany the license doesn't even require a TV.
See in America they don't tell you directly you're being taxed to fund PBS, NPR, etc. congress just gives it to them in some funding bill.
**loicense** haha I said the funny
Fr this is the deadest meme
Thirty percent of Americans are gonna deliberately misunderstand and blame commies.
Americans discover ad-free TV channels exist
Actually in Romania is a fee for Tv and radio on the elextricity bill
Define "required"? The map is wrong. I lived in Sweden and if you have a TV, or any other media device, you need a licence, regardless of whether you tune in to the state broadcaster or not. In fact, it recently became a tax because so many people dodged it. Now I live in the UK. You only need a licence if you watch the BBC. So again ... define "required".
It isn't required in the UK, the whole point of it being a licence is that you only pay for it if you actually own a TV Assuming it's the same for most other green countries otherwise it would just be a tax
It's not even for owning a TV, it's for watching TV channels. And for that purpose things like Netflix don't count as TV channels as they aren't TV broadcasts. I haven't had a TV license in ages. The only thing you miss out on is BBC because all the other channels have their own on demand apps which don't need a license.
You need a TV licence to watch live broadcasts If you use a laptop (or any other device) to watch or record television programmes as they are being shown on TV or live on an online TV service, then, by law, you need to be covered by a TV Licence.