If the tax was brought in it would probably be the end of the “top up by €20 and get free texts and calls”, which I always buy.

We already pay tax on texts at 21%. They call it VAT. We also pay this tax on purchase price of phone AND on electricity to charge the phone.

Skype me…

The tax you pay in Ireland, is the “quality” of life you don’t get.

Put stamps on Email too.

If the money were for Ireland, one might not complain. But the money will be given to the ECB and IMF, for the debts of bankers and the folly of Fianna Failure for underwriting them.

Not for our debts

To hell with that.

Would they attempt to apply this to those free web texts we get?

I think a 1 cent levy would be a good idea. Especially since it would mean all these companies sending spam for free would have to pay 1 cent times the number of texts they send.

We are already paying through the nose for texts.

like omg defo :( LOL

I would, but how would it effect a 20 euro a month ‘unlimited text’ bundle? Hmm

so I have a 18 month contract with free texts to any network I am not paying a cent more

Reading through the comments, you can tell which people just love to complain about anything. It’s such a small, almost meaningless thing but once people see the word ‘tax’ they jump up and go crazy.

In all fairness, it’s probably a good idea but would have been a much better idea a few years ago. Texting will still be around for a while to come but it’s definitely on the way decline in my books with the other types of communication available.

It’s unimplementable, illogical and absolutely ridiculous. Some TD clown read that we send X amount each year so they spent almost minutes thinking of a great idea to tax each text. No thinking through of the idea or even understanding of what a text message is. Why not tax emails or shoe laces or pens or haircuts or tires or sandwiches or teabags or blades of grass or sneezes. JESUS CHRIST, WHAT IS GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY.

We already have a tax on SMS, it’s called VAT 21%

whitishhhh just got slapped there Robert :)

AS IF anyone would stop texting. Sure. Like the way people stopped smoking when the price went up 1000 times.

How about a Tax on Thoughts…..

Men thinking about Sex would have us out of this Bailout hole in a few short months!!

More taxation – more theft, and waste.

The Sun wouldn’t have a patch on you guy and puns today.

I fail to see how this would be a tax on Children, its the Parents that will be buying the Credit in the first place. Taxing Children’s shoes is different as you actually do need to get your kids shoes, but no Child needs a mobile

It’d be a tax on the youth.
Why not tax snail mail too, or corporate email, or Skype calls? (Skype in particular provides no benefit to the Irish economy)

Anyway it would fail, if the price of text messages goes up people will just move to GTalk or something similar.

If the €123m a year was spent on getting this country out of debt, then maybe it could work for the people of this country and others …

Help overweight TD’s by taxing their dinners .

A significant amount of those 12 million txts sent have to have been free. We should all join meteor and avail of the free talk and txts offer.

1c today, then 2c tomorrow then 5c next Wednesday and before you know it texting is more expensive then calling.

A tax on texts would be primarily be a tax on children, although Fine Gael have a history of attacking children (example 1981 VAT on children’s shoes). It goes to show that Fine Gael do not care about those who cannot vote for it. In fairness though all political parties and political institutions do not care about those who cannot vote, they only care for those with money like IBEC, Banks…and we wonder why government personnel change but policies don’t. It is because Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are the one in the same, only the inaptitude of the leaders are different.

@ bm apart from the misspelling
I want to green thumb ur comment a zillion times classic !

If it decreased my exposure to txtspeak then I for one would welcome this new tax.

Who sends texts these days? I don’t! I use twitter and Facebook. I’d rather DM someone on twitter or send a message via Facebook. Quicker and easier as multiplatform. Also imessages on apple, blackberry messages and IM allows mobile users to avoid text. It would be taxing a legacy system which, well I don’t use.