The Hungarian government proposed this week to impose an “Internet tax” on the transfer of data, a move that’s caused outrage from many quarters. Not only would it hit the biggest telecoms, but the costs would be born by normal consumers. Viktor Orban’s party has come in for criticism from more elite circles when it created special taxes or charges on banks, telecoms and the energy sector, but with as much to win as they have to lose, these companies have largely accepted the policies and paid up. Orban will soon find out if taming the Internet beast is a more difficult task, not that he’s likely to be bothered by a Facebook petition protesting the tax that collected 100,000 signatures in less than a day.
Reuters cited the consultancy eNet, which said that under the rules of the proposed tax, the over 1.2 billion gigabytes of traffic in Hungary in 2013 would result in revenues of HUF 175bn. It’s expected that the government will attempt to push through a methodology that would result in the payments being made by Internet providers, rather than their customers.
