YLE TV tax

[Alex.Sm]

Congratulations for your acheivement, and that might be the reason you have upped your voice little bit more in fury about foreigners complaining. You might have passed the Finnish integration program with good grades, as it shows in your post swearing at foreigners with load voice saying fukk off to your country. Its good sign, keep progressing, Good Luck.

My integration program, the grades and my citizenship doesn't have anything to do with the fact that you are arrogant! You are in a country that host's you and offers you a lot of things: maybe work, maybe education ... and you should be gratefully to that! What give's you the right to say that only pensioners should pay the TV tax? Nobody has forced you to come here! And if you are here follow the rules, as everybody else! Nobody here owes you anything! You are not an exception to not pay TV tax, and you make accuses of corruption for those whom proposed and voted the law? Where do you think you are? Zimbabwe? I remind you that Finland is one of the countries with lowest level corruption in the world! And if you make accuses bring proves to support your statement! You are just nagging and accusing to the left and right! Do you have a TV at home? If yes, were you voluntarily paying the TV license fee before 31.12.2012? This tax solves that issue of paying/not paying the TV license fee as it's impossible to go to every single door in the country to check it out! That's my point!

[Liam1]

Read Riku's reply. I think you are getting yourself a bit confused about the role of government. They do not generally provide services and charge the users based on intensity of use. So TV provision may benefit pensioners a bit more, but e.g. Maternity care/education doesn't.

Oh yeah, so, where it in the tax card it says I pay for education or maternity ? BUT it clearly says I pay for YLE even if I use it or not. Whatever they use the tax money for (built road, make hospital, donate to Greece/Ireland/Portugal), its not my concern as I pay the percentage mentioned in my tax card. So, why should I fund some extra organization unwillingly directly from my tax paying extra than the % that I am supposed to pay? If I had choice, I'd rather pay that money to Red Cross than YLE.

Totally Irrelevant on how they itemise your tax bill, you just pay what it says right at the bottom. Move to Switzerland - apparently there you can negotiate your tax bill!!

Think we will have to agree to disagee on the rest, though I think in a country that is consistently rated as amonst the least corrupt, your bribery argument is as strong as the rest of your points.

[Alex.Sm]

Think we will have to agree to disagee on the rest, though I think in a country that is consistently rated as amonst the least corrupt, your bribery argument is as strong as the rest of your points.

Correct!

[jahasjahas]

translation of decent programming

I might be biased for professional reasons, but the fact that Yle is the only Finnish TV network that cares about subtitle quality and pays its translators reasonable wages is a great reason to fund them.

Btw, Liam1, the quotes in your previous message are a bit broken.

[CH]

And exactly what money and how would they have got it?

you know, its called Bribe.... I pass the bill, you pay me this much, you get profit in your business and your Salary will be the topmost in the country, bla bla bla... these kind of things are well practised everywhere. I can say regarding this situation, there might be something of these here, an investigation might prove my point.

You do know that "In your business" here is the government, right (owns 99,98% of Yle)? The same ones that passed the legislation for making it a tax instead of a tv license like it was before. And the ones who decide how much money Yle gets. Yle gets the same money no matter if it is a tv license or a tax. So... who exactly do you say profited from this? Well... low income families who previously payed the tv license... but I mean "Swiss Account" profited, as you previously stated.

As this all seem to be a new thing for you I assume you either don't have a tv or used to watch it without a tv license?

[Alex.Sm]

I get an idea about what level of intelligent personality I am arguing with. There's old saying, don't argue with fools, they will bring you down to their level and beat you with their experience. I'd stop it here

Well I can see you are not just arrogant but you are also ignorant! Probably you are used to have corruption in your home country. I think you are a student here in Finland and because you are studying here "for free (for you)" you should shut your mouth! I repeat my-self because you maybe didn't get it first: NOBODY IN THIS COUNTRY OWES YOU ANYTHING! AND YOU ARE NOT AN EXCEPTION TO NOT PAY TAXES, EITHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT YOU PAY TAXES AND THAT'S IT! STOP NAGGING!

[Liam1]

Least corrupt is not equal to Non-corrupt. Click the link Upphew posted

You were complaining that other posters couldn't argue well, but now you are accusing a govt organisation of corruption without any evidence and even incentive (as CH wrote, they have nothing to gain as their budget is fixed). Doesn't Upphew's article describe how the Red Cross, who you would give your money to, has been involved in dodgy dealing? This hardly strengthens your argument.

I'd quit now if I were you - we get that you don't want to pay extra tax (not many do!) or feel that TV sould be provided by the govt (we'll never agree), but making daft accusations to make your point actually weakens it.

[mrjimsfc]

I have an exchange student from Finland living with me here in America. The massive amount of advertising on the television is driving her up the wall. I explained to her that TV is free here because the advertising pays for everything. Her reply was that "It's not worth the aggravation." I think she may be right! Perhaps you should just pay the TV tax and be happy that you don't have to deal with the endless, mind numbing advertising that we have here.

[betelgeuse]

I have an exchange student from Finland living with me here in America. The massive amount of advertising on the television is driving her up the wall. I explained to her that TV is free here because the advertising pays for everything. Her reply was that "It's not worth the aggravation." I think she may be right! Perhaps you should just pay the TV tax and be happy that you don't have to deal with the endless, mind numbing advertising that we have here.

That situation is a little different. The commercial channels here show much less ads than in America because our legislation sets a maximum time they can show ads.

[rinso]

That situation is a little different. The commercial channels here show much less ads than in America because our legislation sets a maximum time they can show ads.

At the moment.
When the financial situation chances the legislation can be chanced also.
And it is easy to bring the Yle channels under the same legislation, something that can happen if the TV-tax is canceled. (or used to plug other holes)

[Rip]

That situation is a little different. The commercial channels here show much less ads than in America because our legislation sets a maximum time they can show ads.

At the moment.
When the financial situation chances the legislation can be chanced also.

I think it is EU legislation. Anyway, aren't they in both sides of Atlantic moving more and more towards "product placement" - to large extents because the digital recorders make it fairly easy (even now, and probably more so in the future) to skip the ads.

[Adrian42]

because the digital recorders make it fairly easy (even now, and probably more so in the future) to skip the ads.

In the future it might as well become a criminal offence to skip the ads...

And I'm serious on that, just mix DRM with contracts disallowing recorders licenced to use this DRM to skip ads plus the Finnish government already happily doing a police raid when a 10 year old girl downloaded a song from the internet.

DRM is copyright protection, and circumventing copyright protection is considered a pretty serious crime in many countries...

[tizlit]

Thank you Cory and Anna.g
As usual this simple question has accelerated response to why in the first place such a tax should be paid. Well, there are other countries who use the same system, but they deduct the tax directly from electricity bill.

Was unable to open the site for Tax people. What if one's income is so low (mine is), that there is no tax deducted yearly ? What happens then?
Only the spouse pays the tax from his income, inspite there are 2 persons liable to pay.

[Upphew]

Thank you Cory and Anna.g
As usual this simple question has accelerated response to why in the first place such a tax should be paid. Well, there are other countries who use the same system, but they deduct the tax directly from electricity bill.

Was unable to open the site for Tax people. What if one's income is so low (mine is), that there is no tax deducted yearly ? What happens then?
Only the spouse pays the tax from his income, inspite there are 2 persons liable to pay.

http://www.tax.fi/en-US/Individuals/Pub ... asting_tax