1.4 billion revenue from text messages?

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GarBow

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Has Mary White of the Green Party got her calcs slightly wrong with her suggestion that a tax of 1 cent per text message could raise 1.4 billion in a year.

Even if all 4 million people in the country had a phone they would have to send 96 texts a day. Or am i missing something here?
 
GarBow said:
Has Mary White of the Green Party got her calcs slightly wrong with her suggestion that a tax of 1 cent per text message could raise 1.4 billion in a year.

Even if all 4 million people in the country had a phone they would have to send 96 texts a day. Or am i missing something here?
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It would raise about €90m. I actually heard her on the radio this morning arguing with Newstalk about the amount that the tax could raise. She actually mentioned bringing in actuaries to do the maths!!
 
is she suggesting 140 billion is spent pa on text messages? that would show 4m citizens spending about 35,000 pa on text messages....
 
bamboozle said:
is she suggesting 140 billion is spent pa on text messages? that would show 4m citizens spending about 35,000 pa on text messages....
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I reckon that's about right for Mrs. F. My figure is probably a bit lower. Reassuring news this - I used to think she sent a lot of texts. ;)
 
So the greens want to tax about the most environmentally friendly way for getting a message to someone ?
 
Sunny said:
It would raise about €90m. I actually heard her on the radio this morning arguing with Newstalk about the amount that the tax could raise. She actually mentioned bringing in actuaries to do the maths!!
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I loved that one, 25 million texts per day X 365 days X 1 cent.

The work of an actuary is never done....
 
I didn't hear the item, but this is what is on the Newstalk site

A Green Party TD is getting inventive on how to raise more money for the public coffers. Mary White is proposing that a tax of about 1 cent be applied to every text message sent from our mobiles. About 25 million texts are sent every year in Ireland, and on that basis such a tax could raise €91 million. Deputy White told the Breakfast Show she thinks it's a painless way of taking in money in very tough times.
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Where does the €1.4 billion figure come from ? Did she mention it in passing ?
 
TarfHead said:
I didn't hear the item, but this is what is on the Newstalk site



Where does the €1.4 billion figure come from ? Did she mention it in passing ?
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She mentioned it in the Dail and to various media outlets. It wasn't a slip of a tongue.
 
91,250,000. Just short of that 1.4 billion, Mary. You were close.. Soooo close.. :/
 
This quote was taken from the Indo this morning regards the 1.4 billion.

"The deputy said people were free to disagree with her calculations, based on the country's four million people sending an average of 10 texts a day each. But even this only adds up to €146m."

If our politicians are so bad at calculations maybe the deficit they speak of is not 20 billion but only 2 billion!
Fingers crossed.........
 
Shawady said:
.. based on the country's four million people sending an average of 10 texts a day each..
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Well, I don't send 10 a day every day, and mother doesn't have a mobile phone, neither do my children, nor any of their friends/classmates.

So that's 80, straight off, or 800 texts per day to be taken from Deputy White's 'calculations' :rolleyes:
 
then again ..

[broken link removed]

"A RECORD two billion text messages were sent by Irish mobile phone users in the final three months of last year.

Vodafone and O2, the country’s biggest mobile phone operators have a customer base of almost four million between them.

At the end of last year Vodafone had 2.23 million Irish customers while O2 had 1.72 million.

O2 added 82,000 new customers in 2008, which is up almost 5% compared with the previous year.

Its customers sent 699 million texts in the final quarter of 2008 — a 74% increase on the same period last year while Vodafone customers sent close to one billion messages, the highest ever number of texts sent in any quarter.

Meteor would not give specific figures on how many texts were sent last year but it said it has a customer base of 1.3 million and a 20% market share. It said 450 million texts were sent by its customers in December alone."
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So if we assume the same consumption levels (which is unrealistic due to the economic downturn) we end up with 8,000,000,000 messages for Voda/O2 plus 5,400,000,000 for Meteor which makes 13,400,000,000 in total. Figures for 3 are not available so we don't know.

So it's 13,400,000,000 text at 0.01 euro each makes 134,000,000 €.

A far reach from the 1.4 billion menitoned by the politian.

But as unemployment raises to 25% and people take about 15% salary cut they can't continue to pay.

Also collecting the tax would certainly cost a lot of admin burden by the network providers.

So a nice plan of getting 134,000,000 € but I don't know if it's actualy realistic.
 
GarBow said:
Has Mary White of the Green Party got her calcs slightly wrong with her suggestion that a tax of 1 cent per text message could raise 1.4 billion in a year.

Even if all 4 million people in the country had a phone they would have to send 96 texts a day. Or am i missing something here?
Click to expand...

A Paper free, environmentally friendly way for the citzens of the country to communicate and the Greens want to tax it:(:eek:. Only in the Banana Republic of Ireland.

P.S. Although I do like the idea of a tax on teenyboppers :D
 
Here's your chance to vote on the text tax...

If you think there should be a text tax, text YES to BLenihan at 57121
If you think there should not be a text tax, text NO to BLenihan at 57122

(Texts cost €1.00 each. Enter as often as you like - we need the dough!)
 
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