An HM Treasury insider, the recently retired 'Sir Jonathan' (not his real name) and I have made contact this morning. But note the date - 1st April! I knew 'Johnny' when he was a young glider pilot.
Well, I don't know quite what to make of all that. The date 1st April makes me highly suspicious, but anything seems possible these days. The Chancellor has said no tax rises – presumably that is politician’s jargon for personal taxes. As a way round that, a ‘poster’s tax’ could be levied on the organisation not the individual. The organisation would then need to increase (or introduce) membership fees. Crafty stealth tax."Good to hear from you, Jack, you old b*gger. Still going strong! Yes, I've been retired more than 12 years now. Decent pension from the Civil Service. But I've just heard an alarming story from former colleagues.
"The Tax Man of course has to find ways of screwing every last penny out of the public. A recent graduate of Keele, 'Melissa', apparently had this idea of adding VAT to all electronic communications - emails, texting, forums, social media. Each post would be assigned a nominal value of one penny! So the VAT each time would be 0.2 pence. A typical poster might make ten to 15 a day, so that would be the trivial amount of just two to three pence. But with perhaps 40 million UK internet / smartphone users, that daily total would amount to £1,000,000 give or take or around £350 million (£350,000,000) per year, a useful sum for the Treasury. Not an accurate figure, of course, but probably in the right 'ballpark' (whatever Americans mean by a ballpark).
"If this rumour is true, then clearly fewer people will post stuff and another government department will be delighted to see yet more limits on free speech:-)
"I honestly have no idea Jack if there is any truth in this rumour, but maybe some young upstart might take up the idea. Of course, if a nominal charge for a post were 10p instead of 1 p, that would raise around £3.5 Billion per year - that would be more than enough to pay for two or three Civil Service pensions (I wish!) Or a new CEO at a major airport!
"Surely you’re not still gliding are you? How old are you now? Must be nearly 90."
Jack