The EU is debating a proposal by a French parliamentary member that puts forward a tax initiative of €0.015 (less than two U.S. pennies) for every SMS message sent in the EU and a €0.00001 tax for each email sent. While the tax is seemingly minuscule, the U.K. alone saw 100 million SMS messages every day in March, which would make for approximately $700 million in tax revenue for the country if the tax were put into effect. Some estimate the tax could bring in close to $5 billion across the EU.
For on the SMS, email tax proposal:
- see this article from Red Herring