Brit Govt in Tax Overdrive

[B16Enk]

Absolutely nuts:

Firms face new tax on staff e-mail to friends

By Gabriel Rozenberg, Economics Reporter

EMPLOYERS could be forced to police their staff’s use of office computers or risk facing a punitive new stealth tax on themselves and their employees, The Times has learnt.

Tax lawyers and Opposition MPs are seeking urgent clarification of the scope of new taxes on business computer equipment, which Gordon Brown introduced without fanfare in his Budget in March.

The Treasury has played down the extent of the changes. However, the Finance Bill, to be debated in the House of Commons tomorrow, makes clear that both employers and employees will now be taxed if they use office computers for personal reasons, such as surfing the web or sending e-mails to friends, unless their personal use is “not significantâ€

[DoubleTap]

To think someone voted these idiots in......

Things aren't much better here in many ways, M8. I have become more of a Libertarian in the last few years as I see more and more government intrusiveness in a myriad of ways. Here, there was a effort by some in Congress to include web sites and emails with political content as under jurisdiction of the already stupid Campaign Finance Laws.

The effect would have been to assign a certain value to things you wrote or posted, because they might hurt or help a particular candidate, and thus be equivalent to cash donations. Thus, if the value of your "donations" exceeded a certain amount, you were in violation of CFL. The fines would start in the thousands, which of course would cripple any independent person just wanting to speak his mind about X. Basically, it was a way to limit free speech, although the supporters would never call it that.

All of this is geared to generating a larger bureaucracy that will of course need to fund itself by finding more things to fine, and well the more violations to keep tabs on, the more money you need, and the more money you need...

And, of course, with the need to monitor what's appropriate and what's not "for business", your government gets to monitor what you surf, period.

Its insidious...