Doesn’t the British govt. charge a license fee to watch your own TV in your home? I seem to remember pics of British govt. vans driving around neighborhoods with detector equipment engaged, looking for unlicensed tv watching folks to nick for the fees. Not cheap either, as I recall.
“Doesn’t the British govt. charge a license fee to watch your own TV in your home?”
Yes. An annual fee. From wiki:
Since April 2021, the annual cost has been £159.00 for a colour licence and £53.50 for a black and white licence. Income from the licence is primarily used to fund the television, radio and online services of the BBC. The total income from licence fees was £3.83 billion in 2017–18,[3] of which £655.3 million or 17.1% was provided by the government through concessions for those over the age of 75 (this subsidy has now been phased out). Thus, the licence fee made up the bulk (75.7%) of the BBC’s total income of £5.0627 billion in 2017–2018.[3]
Yup. On my last trip to Wales, the B&B advertised "fully licensed TV" as a selling point for staying there. My last trip was in April 1999, so my experience may be dated. I did flip on the "tube" to watch some programs on S4C (Welsh language programming).
These taxes brought to you by the gov (king) that took over licensing marriage from the church in order to charge a fee as a way to increase revenue.
WWG1WGA!
Yep. An appreciable proportion of their goal population is elderly tellytax scofflaws.