The 50p tax for NGA: HMRC lands a nasty surprise in its consultation.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/cons...ndlineduty.pdf

ALL fixed lines will pay the tax, whether copper, coaxial or fibre.
See sections 3.3 to 3.5.

So if you have Openreach copper for your phone (and doesn't matter who
the retail service provider is) and Virgin coax for broadband it's
proposed that you pay twice.

And when/ if you have FTTH fibre (or a FTTC hybrid of both) you will
also pay under the proposals.

Mark wrote:
> http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/cons...ndlineduty.pdf
>
> ALL fixed lines will pay the tax, whether copper, coaxial or fibre.
> See sections 3.3 to 3.5.
>
> So if you have Openreach copper for your phone (and doesn't matter who
> the retail service provider is) and Virgin coax for broadband it's
> proposed that you pay twice.
>
> And when/ if you have FTTH fibre (or a FTTC hybrid of both) you will
> also pay under the proposals.

What do you expect from Gordon. He has spent all our money and has then
borrowed up to the hilt. He needs lots of money fast.



--
Old Codger
e-mail use reply to field

What matters in politics is not what happens, but what you can make
people believe has happened. [Janet Daley 27/8/2003]

Mark wrote:
> http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/cons...ndlineduty.pdf
>
> ALL fixed lines will pay the tax, whether copper, coaxial or fibre.
> See sections 3.3 to 3.5.
>
> So if you have Openreach copper for your phone (and doesn't matter who
> the retail service provider is) and Virgin coax for broadband it's
> proposed that you pay twice.
>
> And when/ if you have FTTH fibre (or a FTTC hybrid of both) you will
> also pay under the proposals.

----------------------------------------------

From the link given above

Try looking a little further down in that section:

3.7 There are some difficulties with this general approach due to how some
retailers provide services to their customers. Virgin Media provide
broadband services over a co-axial cable but standard voice services over a
separate copper line where other providers would just use a single copper
line for both voice and broadband services. BT will also face similar issues
where fibre is overlaid on copper wires. Government's intention is to ensure
that there is no double liability under these circumstances.

So according to this, that double liability should not apply.

BTW, I don't agree with the this tax.

"Unbeleiver" <cb@.....tts.is.invalid> wrote in message
news:hgbngp$cbi$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Mark wrote:
>> http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/cons...ndlineduty.pdf
>>
>> ALL fixed lines will pay the tax, whether copper, coaxial or fibre.
>> See sections 3.3 to 3.5.
>>
>> So if you have Openreach copper for your phone (and doesn't matter who
>> the retail service provider is) and Virgin coax for broadband it's
>> proposed that you pay twice.
>>
>> And when/ if you have FTTH fibre (or a FTTC hybrid of both) you will
>> also pay under the proposals.
>
> ----------------------------------------------
>
> From the link given above
>
> Try looking a little further down in that section:
>
> 3.7 There are some difficulties with this general approach due to how some
> retailers provide services to their customers. Virgin Media provide
> broadband services over a co-axial cable but standard voice services over
> a separate copper line where other providers would just use a single
> copper line for both voice and broadband services. BT will also face
> similar issues where fibre is overlaid on copper wires. Government's
> intention is to ensure that there is no double liability under these
> circumstances.
>
> So according to this, that double liability should not apply.
>
> BTW, I don't agree with the this tax.

I don't either but it looks like we're going to have to pay it!
/goes into reluctant acceptance mode...

George

"George Weston" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I don't either but it looks like we're going to have to pay it!
>/goes into reluctant acceptance mode...

A Conservative government would scrap the planned 50 pence per month tax on
every landline - which the current government plans to use to subsidise
faster broadband in rural regions - "as soon as possible", according to the
shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.

nospam wrote:
> "George Weston" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>> I don't either but it looks like we're going to have to pay it!
>> /goes into reluctant acceptance mode...
>
> A Conservative government would scrap the planned 50 pence per month
> tax on every landline - which the current government plans to use to
> subsidise faster broadband in rural regions - "as soon as possible",
> according to the shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.



And pigs might fly! Camron will say absolutely anything to get his well
polished arse over the threshold of No 10.

I lived through the last 13 years of Tory mis-rule, and I know the only
time a Tory tells the truth is when his/her mouth is shut!

On 16/12/09 22:28, Mark wrote:
> http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/cons...ndlineduty.pdf
>
> ALL fixed lines will pay the tax, whether copper, coaxial or fibre.
> See sections 3.3 to 3.5.
>
> So if you have Openreach copper for your phone (and doesn't matter who
> the retail service provider is) and Virgin coax for broadband it's
> proposed that you pay twice.
>
> And when/ if you have FTTH fibre (or a FTTC hybrid of both) you will
> also pay under the proposals.

Given that it's slightly cheaper to get cable with a phone line (for
reasons I cannot fathom) I would imagine the majority would be
unaffected. Presumably if you get phone and internet via some form of
wireless (i.e. gsm or voip for calling and wifi/wimax/3g/etc for data)
you can avoid the fee.

"Unbeleiver" <cb@.....tts.is.invalid> wrote:

>nospam wrote:
>> "George Weston" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't either but it looks like we're going to have to pay it!
>>> /goes into reluctant acceptance mode...
>>
>> A Conservative government would scrap the planned 50 pence per month
>> tax on every landline - which the current government plans to use to
>> subsidise faster broadband in rural regions - "as soon as possible",
>> according to the shadow culture secretary Jeremy Hunt.
>
>
>
>And pigs might fly! Camron will say absolutely anything to get his well
>polished arse over the threshold of No 10.

Yes it worked for Blair didn't it.

>I lived through the last 13 years of Tory mis-rule, and I know the only
>time a Tory tells the truth is when his/her mouth is shut!

Wow you and 30 odd million others. Like FuLab never tell porkies...

I'm sure the Tories will turn out to be a pack of useless wankers, but much
less useless than FuLab. I would rather be governed by a pack of wankers
that FuLab, hell I would rather be governed by a cupboard full of broom
handles which would have done less damage to our society, country, and
economy than FuLab.

This 50p per phone line is just another new tax, hypothecation is bollocks,
it is consistent with FuLabs overriding policy which is to ensure they and
not you get to decide how your money is spent.

I am hopeful the Tories will scrap it because it is just another new tax,
and they are going to have to raise plenty of tax as it is to try to reduce
the mountain of debt FuLab is *still* building. FuLab claim they can't
reduce spending because it will delay recovery from the recession and at
the same time they increase National Insurance (tax on jobs) which will
reduce personal and company spending and delay recovery from the recession
- they are so full of shit, simply addicted to spending money they don't
have.

Java Jive <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Then there was the Community Charge (Poll Tax) / Council Tax fiasco.
>The previous method of funding local government, the Rating System,
>was admittedly unfair, in that the charge was on dwelling and
>proportional to size and the 'poshness' of the area it was in, and
>thus was not closely coupled with ability to pay.

Just like your ability to vote and elect a council who decides how much to
tax and what to spend it on was not closely (not at all) coupled to how
much of that tax was going to come out of your pocket. So the poor who paid
sod all council tax would vote for a labour council who would tax the shit
out of the rich and spend it on them. The Poll tax was a fuck up but the
idea behind it to give every voter an interest in electing a frugal council
which taxed and spent wisely was fine.

>ability to pay. In what I imagine must be just about the biggest mass
>act of civil disobedience in this country since the suffragette

Yeah I remember a conversation in a pub with a can't pay won't pay refusnik
woman about her day in court, a conversation which 10 minutes later had
moved on to how much she liked the beemer she just bought. Plenty of people
jumped on that bandwagon because they could, not because they deserved to
be on it.

>So, for the Tories, 'cutting taxes' always means cutting them for the
>rich, but increasing them for everyone else.

When the Tories get in they aren't going to be cutting taxes, they have
FuLabs national debt amounting to around 23,000 quid for every person in
the country to pay back. The real difference is they won't be pissing away
our money on harebrain schemes like NGA and ID cards.

Unbeleiver <cb@.....tts.is.invalid> wrote:
> 3.7 There are some difficulties with this general approach due to how some
> retailers provide services to their customers. Virgin Media provide
> broadband services over a co-axial cable but standard voice services over a
> separate copper line where other providers would just use a single copper
> line for both voice and broadband services. BT will also face similar issues
> where fibre is overlaid on copper wires. Government's intention is to ensure
> that there is no double liability under these circumstances.
>
> So according to this, that double liability should not apply.

But what if you have connections from two providers? For example, Virgin
coax for broadband and Openreach copper for telephone? The HMRC
pronouncement above covers the case where Virgin's standard install is 1 or
2 coax+N twisted pairs - that would be treated as one connection. But what
if you elect to use Openreach's twisted pair rather than Virgin's?

But how do you get BT and Virgin to communicate to avoid there being a
competitive disadvantage to getting half your service from BT and half from
Virgin? Both would dearly love to make you sign up to a bundle package, as
they get to fleece you through expensive calls (Virgin) or flaky internet
(BT). So there's not even an incentive for them to lobby against this.

Theo