Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Relativity

One thing that gets on my goat are well-off folk who pontificate about the wonderful value for money of the BBC's licence fee.

Maybe it is, although £145.50 is quite a large sum for a low paid worker earning, say, 8K a year. A couple on the average wage would be paying out over £900 if they were charged at the same percentage of their income, while a couple of middle managers in the public service would be forking out £1500. Still good value for money or would we start to hear some squeals?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

40p a day. Two thirds of the price of the Western Mail.
It is, however, certainly regressive as you suggest.
Maybe we should just absorb it into general taxation and have a properly graduated tax system. But that's not going to happen while the fetishisation of the headline income tax rate encourages governments of all colours to raise tax by stealth.

radnorian said...

Well of course they don't take you to court for reading the Echo just because you've failed to cough up for the Western Mail.

You're quite right about income tax, how Labour can actually boast about not raising the 20p tax rate is beyond me. If they win they will obviously have to raise VAT which will hit the lowest paid hardest yet again.

The licence fee as part of general taxation is also a sensible idea ... but should it all go to the BBC?