EU lawmakers consider taxing emails, SMS messages

EU lawmakers consider taxing emails, SMS messages
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Union lawmakers are investigating a proposed tax on emails and mobile phone text messages as a way to fund the 25-member bloc in the future.

A European Parliament working group is reviewing the idea, tabled by Alain Lamassoure, a prominent French MEP and member of the centre-right European People’s Party, the assembly’s largest group.

Lamassoure, a member of Jacques Chirac’s UMP party, is proposing to add a tax of around 1.5 cents on text or SMS messages and a 0.00001 cent levy on every email sent.

Well good luck to them. Good thing I don’t live in an EU country. I don’t understand why the email messages are so cheap though, you can get like 100,000 messages for 1 cent. If they would charge 1 cent per email, they might discourage spammers a bit more.