Blog - 9th August 2010

The Direct Debt Solutions blog section is a source of the latest news in the financial world.

Scrapping of phone tax 'is good news for bill payers'

Published on 9th August 2010

Government plans for a landline tax were unfair, an expert has said.

The Labour government's proposals to introduce a tax on British home phone lines were unreasonable and their abolition will benefit telecoms customers, according to an industry expert.

In his delivery of the Budget on Tuesday, chancellor George Osborne announced that the government will scrap landline duty, which was designed to fund investment in digital infrastructure for the UK.

Michael Phillips, product director at comparison site Broadbandchoices.co.uk, described the original plans as unfair, as not all landline customers would have benefited from how their taxes were spent.

He said: "There are still a lot of people who aren't bothered about broadband. Why should they have to pay for the roll-out of broadband in the UK when they have just got a phone line because they want to make a call to friends but they don't want to be online."

In his Budget speech, Mr Osborne said that investment in digital infrastructure was "needed" but that landline duty was an "archaic" way of achieving it.

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