Home phone News

50p landline tax scrapped in austerity Budget

Wednesday 23 June, 2010

By Becca Talbot - becca@consumerchoices.co.uk

British consumers can breathe a sigh of relief as plans to hit them with a 50p a month phone line tax have been scrapped by the new coalition government.

Chancellor George Osborne confirmed yesterday in the emergency Budget that the controversial landline tax has been axed, and that British homes would not be hit by the £6 a year proposed tax.

Osborne said: “I am happy to be able to abolish this new duty before it is even introduced.”

Under the proposed landline tax, was originally outlined in Lord Carter’s Digital Britain report in June last year, every household in the country with a fixed phone line would have been charged 50p a month, in an attempt to raise £170million a year to fund the rollout of superfast broadband across the UK.

The new coalition government has decided to use the £51million leftover from the digital TV switchover kitty to push through with the rollout of broadband services to rural parts of the country.

“Instead, we will support private broadband investment, including to rural areas, in part with funding from the Digital Switchover under-spend within the TV licence fee,” said Osborne.