PiS to force every hard working, low earning Polish family to pay for TV

Well, well, well...entirely as predicted, PiS have announced details of their public TV plan, and the most important thing?

Every single home will be forced to pay for TV regardless if they have one or not.

wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/10,114927,19282238,koniec-z-abonamentem-rtv-pis-przygotowal-nowa-ustawe-zaplaca.html#Prze


That's right. You don't have a TV? Doesn't matter. PiS will make you pay for it. That's 120zł extra tax yearly on every hard working, low earning Polish family.

The British government does exactly the same to pay to that crappy left-wing communist channel called BBC.

Even if you dont watch BBC you need to pay for that sh*t.

So they are copying the model of government that you defend Delph. And you are criticizing they for doing that?

Ironical.

No, it doesn't. If you don't watch live TV, you're not obliged to pay for it.


Wrong. If you don't watch live TV then you don't pay for it. A significant amount of people in the UK never watch live TV and instead watch catch-up TV on the numerous services available, which doesn't require a licence.

By the way, making everyone pay for something regardless if they use it or not is very very communist indeed.

That's pretty terrible to be honest, but makes me wonder how effective trying to enforce it will be?
As it stands at the moment with the TV license system, so a friend was telling me a couple of weeks ago, it's pretty easy to get out of paying the licence fee, and many people don't.

the Uk licence fee is 845zl per year ( so that the luvvies can play at the bbc), should be interesting to see how poland implements the charge.

It will be very easy. PiS have put two proposals on the table - first one is that it will be through a mandatory addition to the yearly income tax declaration (unlike in the UK, everyone is obliged to submit a tax return here) - and the second is that it will be like the Greek system where there's a mandatory addition to electricity bills.

Either way makes sure that the tax will be paid by everyone.


Yep, the current system is very easy to avoid. It's a fee collected by Poczta Polska, but they have no legal authority to enter your property. The vast majority of people don't pay for it, and there are no checks whatsoever.

What happened last time PiS turned TVP into PiSTV was that PO were very successful in telling people not to pay for the licence, and many people stopped paying. Why TVP can't be reformed into a pay-TV channel is beyond me, but well - Putin's example from Russia shows how important it is to control publicly-available TV.

Many pensioners that live near me can't afford wood to burn this winter, what happens to them, is the charge deducted from their pensions?, I guess the devil is in the detail, we will wait and see.

Why should this surprise me ? Religion in schools is funded in the same way, under the excuse that 90% or more Poles are Catholic. Religious offense trials are also paid from public money.

PiS and the Church are using the word "leftist" as an insult because they don't know what it means. Much of their program is left-winged, but they're in denial.

Yes but look at salaries and welfare benefits in the UK compared to Poland, so naturally the fee is a lot higher there.


It's heartbreaking really isn't it, the poverty so many older people live in. The idea that they should have to pay for a TV licence is outrageous. They should be exempt from the charge.


I believe there's been talk in the UK and Ireland about bringing in a licence to cover any device on which TV programmes can be viewed.

Not really. If everybody who doesn't have a TV or doesn't want to pay, wrote NO on their tax return, or deducted the amount on their electricity bill - then just as in the UK with Thatchers' Poll tax, we all know who the winner would be, and it wouldn't be the government.

The Polish population is soft, and always pays up.

I see. So it looks as though there's no escape then.
I presume that the 10 zł monthly audiovisual fee covers radio then, as currently if you don't have a TV, but have a radio, you still have to pay for that though I think it's a lesser amount.

I suppose they are presuming that even if a household doesn't have a TV, most would at least have a radio, so barely anyone would be exempt. They surely can't charge for a household having no audiovisual appliances at all.


Presume that will come out of their electric bill :(


Yes they should be. Even in the UK, over 75's are exempt from paying.

If a good lawyer fought the electricity companies and ultimately the Government regarding the imposition of the 10 pln on every household bill, they would win, even if the case has to go to Strasbourg. In my view, you cannot be made to pay for a service (tv and radio) which you do not receive as you may not have a TV or radio in your house.

No one can assume what household equipment (TV, radio, fridge, cooker, washer, dishwasher or any other) someone MUST have in their house. If this is the case, then the Government should provide these items in order to then impose tax on them.

I will take this up myself. I have a holiday flat, get electricity bills, but do not have a TV or a radio in the flat. I cannot be forced to pay for something I do not make use of.

So you might think, but similar systems (usually using electricity bills) have been in place in several countries for years and no-one has won any legal challenge to them. The way it works is that it's just a surcharge on your electricity bill (a tax on using electricity, if you will) - and Finland simply has a special tax that goes to pay for their public broadcaster.


They probably wouldn't, not without causing huge problems to many national broadcasters in Europe. The EBU (which is what is behind Eurovision) is also massively influential and would fight all the way.


Usually with these tax-based systems, you're not paying for TV, you're paying a special tax which is for funding public television and radio.

If you have a TV, you need to buy a licence, whether or not you watch the BBC. Trust me I know, I have a criminal record for this. You couldnt fecking make it up could you? Here we are living in this consumer society where words such as 'freedom' and 'choice' are bandied about, yet if you don't want this service, you are criminalised. Imagine if SkyTV or similar tried this trick.

I had to attend court the same morning as a well known child murderer.

No, only if you watch live TV. Look here - tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/Live-TV-and-how-you-watch-it


Nope, it's madness in this day and age that we're forced to support public TV services.

I wouldn't object to a 40zł tax to fund Polskie Radio, but funding TVP...hahahaha. It will be PiSTV through and through, only presenting approved viewpoints and any journalist that dares to contradict PiS will be immediately fired.

I know that that is what they SAY but the truth is that if you have a TV, you have to pay.
Also, you get these muppet goons coming to your house with fake search warrants to use on people who look like they dont know any better.

Surely that is illegal? Anyway...
How would this work in Poland? Surely people would just refuse to pay?

It has been empirically proven by scholars that the BBC is a conservative mouthpiece:
newstatesman.com/broadcast/2013/08/hard-evidence-how-biased-bbc


To even attempt to say that the BBC is left-wing is idiotic to the highest degree.

of course it is not 'left wing' it is a mouthpiece of the establishment in Britain and is there to brainwash people into being 'good' paying citizens.

The only way to break free of this insidious control is get rid of the TV completely.

Personally I'll be increasing my cost of doing business by 670zl a year by claiming for something or other that I have until now not claimed for. I think I'll actually claim for a percentage of my gas bill. To date I haven't been claiming it as a cost of doing business because it isn't, so I don't claim it as one even though I'm legally entitled to claim it as one, but if I am forced to pay a tax on something which I don't have, I see no problem with off-setting that by reducing tax I pay in another way.

Well, well, well, the OP of this thread has just shown what biased information can really be:


No, the most important thing is that the new TV licence fee is going to be reduced by half comparing to what it is now or what it was planned for 2016..

1. The TV licence fee now is 232,20 ZL yearly (2015) or 247,30 ZL(as planned for 2016 by the liberal and progressive PO party).
2. The TV licence fee as proposed by the much less liberal and progressive PiS for the year 2016 is 120 ZL.

The trick in it is that more and more people did not register their TV at the post-office or un-registered them, but still watched the TV programmes, public TV included.

Those who paid the TV licence paid it for them as the TV licence was calculated twice as high as the amount put forward by PiS now.

If every houisehold is forced to pay for the TV licence now, there will be households who do not own the TV set, but they will have to pay. Those are very few, however, so on average every one is going to pay for themselves.

In conclusion: there will much be much less social injustice in paying the TV licence now within the system proposed by PiS in comparison to the level of unfairness as observed under the rule of the supposely progressive and liberal party such as PO which for the last 8 years has done nothing or did not want to do anything to reform the system of paying the TV licence.

That's your claim, but the reality is that there are lots of households which don't have a TV and the number of them grows every month. At least two of us have posted in this thread already.

The reality is that everybody or almost every household in Poland do own a TV set, those without it do not pay taxes anyway but receive social help. Ah and few foreigners who are struggling with Polish language and hence do not watch Polish TV anyways do not count due to their small number.

Anyway you are always harping about paying your tax in Poland and how much you are supporting local economy and here we have an obvious example of you trying to wriggle out of your obligation. Seems to me that you are paying taxes cause you have no other choice and diffidently no because you want to contribute.

You see Harry obeying the law is not a cause to be celebrated as a hero, its your duty and a common enough occurrence regardless of what you might think.

That may be the view from outside Poland, but here we know that the reality is very different to the imaginations of people who haven't lived in Poland for decades. In Warsaw a lot of people don't have TVs because there is no need to have a TV, the selection of stuff to watch on the internet is far bigger and better.


Why should I or anybody else have to pay tax on something they don't have? Why aren't you volunteering to pay this tax? Sure, you don't have a TV in Poland, but you think that I should have to pay a tax in a TV I don't have, so why aren't you offering to pay that same tax on something you also don't have.


Actually there are lots of tax exemptions which I don't take advantage of, the gas bill is just one. My accountant keeps warning me that I'm risking a full-blown tax inspection because I'm not claiming for things that every other company claims and that is going to make the tax office suspicious.

I personally think that 10 ZL per month is no big deal (I don't watch Polish tv but paying 10 ZL won't bother me) but of course I believe that the retired who are for their most part dirt poor could be exempted.

What about the people who do not live in their flats/houses throughout the year?
Also, as I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong....all Polish stations are in the hands of PRIVATE COMPANIES.
Why should we add to their private profits?

The prime minister said a couple of times they prioritize SECURITY over anything else. They need to secure themselves in position of power. They'd love to leave Schengen in the name of scurity - then they can boast that Poles stopped migrating.

My poor Polish is not the reason why I don't watch Polish TV at home. When I happen to be in a place where there's a TV on, it seems that there's utter trash liberally interspersed with OTC medicine ads. I have a smart TV at home and use it to watch documentaries on YT and Vimeo. Polish TV isn't worth 10PLN per month. If it was any good, I'd watch it, but twenty minutes of haemorrhoid cream ads in between (no) talent shows is not how I want to be entertained.

Not true. A lot of under 30s, and academics, don't bother with said TV, and why would they in the internet age?

No matter you seeing it wrongly as TV license fee it is not longer that, it is a new tax for public TV, hence it doesn't matter whether you are watching TV or not.

Oh, I do understand now.
Perhaps they should tax all adults (over 18) for every day they live. If they (adults) want to live tomorrow they have to prepay for tomorrow (say 5 pln) - otherwise curtains.

I see exactly where we are going with this. Tax people for the air that they breathe........