BBC News : E-mail tax MEP upgrades website

Quote Originally Posted by BBC
A French MEP who raised the idea of a tax on e-mails and text messages is upgrading his website after it was overloaded by angry e-mail complaints.

Last May, Alain Lamassoure said a tax of 1.5 euro cents (1p, 1.9 US cents) on texts and 0.00001 cents on e-mails could help fund the EU in future.

But the proposal caused fury across the blogosphere, and some 2,000 e-mails swamped his message board.

Mr Lamassoure then backtracked and said he would no longer push the idea.
Taxing SMS is not such a bad idea as they already aren't free. But emails is just ridiculous, and anyway would be impossible to implement without serious breaches of privacy. Then would it apply to anyone sending an email from the EU, or anyone of EU nationality, or any EU resident even when they send a mail from outside a EU (e.g. on holiday) ? That is clearly not feasible as it would require people to register some form of official ID with their nationality or visa status before sending an email from any address. That would be totally against anonimity and the freedom of speech that goes with it.