Philippines. House body OKs tax on text messages

The Inquirer reports that a committee of the House of Representatives approved Tuesday a bill seeking to impose a five-centavo excise tax on every text, picture, and video and audio clip sent through mobile phones.

The proposed tax is expected to generate between P20 billion and P36 billion (between $414million and $745million I think) a year for the government.

Nearly 70 million prepaid subscribers nationwide send on the average at least 10 text messages a day.

For years the issue of taxing SMS has been brought up by the Philippines and other countries:

-- Related attemps to tax SMS around the world

-- Sacramento voters to decide whether to tax text messages

emily | 7:49 AM | News, Buzz, SMS and Politics |
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