TV licence query

Bamber19

davidlizard wrote: »

The topic of whether one requires a television licence for simply owning a television set comes up again and again and again.

YOU DO NOT REQUIRE A LICENCE FOR OWNING A TELEVISION, ONLY FOR RECEIVING TELEVISION AS IT IS BROADCAST. You do not require a television licence to watch DVDs, play XBox games, monitor CCTV and the like. However, if you do not own a television, but watch or record TV as it is broadcast on any other device, including PCs or mobile phones, then a licence is required.

If bits of the Communication Act 2003 are taken in isolation, then it might appear that a licence is required for simply owning a television. However when the relevant definitions in this act, and the Communications (Television Licensing) Regulations 2004 acts are read alongside this, it is clear that a TV licence is not required. Both the BBC and Television Licencing (although they are the same people) also make this clear.

Please see this post here off the Praise and Vents board which explains this in detail.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=38176242&postcount=109

Ha, I was just reading this thread and was thinking "Oh No, I'm going to have to find my post to link to it, or worse type it all out again." it should be a sticky to avoid the same "You must have a licence to even think about a television" argument once a month.

veganpanda

the_big_fact_hunt wrote: »

its not lunacy, these gits annoy me because they have people like my wife too scared to tell them where to stick their demands, if i didnt work and could be there when their "agents" came to call they would be given 10 seconds to get off my property, then they would find themselves leaving clean over the top of the gate.
It annoys me that the BBC wont openly admit to what they do to get you to give them money, i.e. sending muppets round to scare you into paying up, or confessing your crime so they can punish you, or hiding behind trademarks and not admitting that the licence fee is only for their stuff.
They call you their customer even if you have no need for their licence, they wont even accept that their is another option. It also annoys me that they wont admit to the fact that their detection equipment is a load of rubbish, if it works why dont they just prove it beyond reasonable doubt? because that would convince far too many people that they dont need to pay because they wouldnt get caught.
If i want sky or virgin i need a device t unscramble the broadcast, the BBC should operate in exactly the same way, no pay, no picture then the British public can show them how much they actually want them and their endless streams of poor entertainment

I totally understand your anger about the BBC's unjust TV Licence & wanted to thank you for your great comments on here :T I'm hoping they will help covince others to stop paying this disgusting television tax! I stopped my Direct Debit to the BBC (Capita) 2 years ago & if I had known how easy it was to do, I would've done it much sooner.

My main gripe about the licence is that; if your income is £20 or £20,000 a week, you're still asked to pay the same... which is (of course) sick!

Kurtis_Blue

veganpanda wrote: »

I totally understand your anger about the BBC's unjust TV Licence & wanted to thank you for your great comments on here :T I'm hoping they will help covince others to stop paying this disgusting television tax! I stopped my Direct Debit to the BBC (Capita) 2 years ago & if I had known how easy it was to do, I would've done it much sooner.

My main gripe about the licence is that; if your income is £20 or £20,000 a week, you're still asked to pay the same... which is (of course) sick!

Why should any one else pay more for some one on a low incomes TV viewing? every one in this country's after a handout.

I don't agree in so many things my £10,000's of tax money goes towards, wars, lazy jobless with full Sky package fags and lottery, not sure that gives me the freedom to break the law and commit tax fraud/evasion and incite others to do the same.

I find it funny people get so annoyed at spending £150 on some thing with an actual enjoyable end product, when millions upon millions of pounds of tax money is spent on some really dubious schemes.

giraffe69

I won't waste everyone's time saying how I feel about acts of Parliament

One can see that you are no great democrat but that is how our system/(imperfect though it is) works.

My main gripe about the licence is that; if your income is £20 or £20,000 a week you're still asked to pay the same... which is (of course) sick!

So it will come as a shock that the same is true of Road Fund Licence? I expect that the VAT on Mars Bars should alter according to income. How about betting tax? tax on alcoholic drinks? tax on insurance policies or flights. To have regressive taxes is hardly an invention of this or the last century here or in any other country.

If we had no way of raising money for public service broadcasting then it would cease in its current form which is certainly a viable choice. We could have the same adverts and programme types on all channels. We could also fund it out of other taxes e.g. income tax if preferred. Personally I wouldn't greatly object to either of those. There is scope via the black market for reducing this burden also, of course, as an alternative to stopping your direct debit. I think the BBC does some great things but it wastes a lot and does some things I don't think it should but others will disagree.

As to who collects the money the Government appoints an agent. In this case it is Capita. I can't see the problem with this if that is the chosen revenue raising model.

One advantage of collecting it via income tax is that the cost of detection and enforcement would be removed and those who try to avoid paying would have to find other methods but they would also have to taken out their hostility on someone or something else. How about the disgraceful restaurant owner who does not check income before providing you with your meal?

moneysavingkitten

Thanks very much everybody for all the replies, this has proved to be quite an interesting thread, I didn't expect it to cause so much discussion when I posted it.

From what I gather from reading this thread, I still think I have no need for a tv license for what I am doing at the moment. Even if I go on to watch on demand tv in the future, I still don't need one (who wants to watch programs to someone else's schedule anyway?) I am still slightly unsure as to whether I should tell them so or not though. I keep thinking, I am not doing anything wrong, so why would it hurt to tell them? But perhaps that is naive?

It makes sense if I don't need a license, I shouldn't need to contact them. I think it said somewhere in there that it is up to them to prove you need a license, not for you to prove you don't? But I don't really want to risk a fine, I have just about cleared all my debts and don't want any more!

So I am still a little undecided as to what to do.

None the of the posts really answers my original question There seem to be people here who pay the license and some who don't, but no one has actually declared to TVL that they don't need one? I am still curious about the process of declaring that you don't need one to TVL.

I think what most annoys me about the tv license is that I thought it was supposed to be paid, so the BBC could remain independent and neutral if you will, so they could just report the news. But from what I have seen in the past, it just seems to be blatant propaganda and they often seem to focus on the least important aspects of news articles. Also the news articles change through the day and they don't seem to be able to report figures accurately. I can think of another example where they didn't report about a particular war until about 7 years after it happened. Some of the news doesn't even seem to be news any more, it's vague celebrity interviews and at times seems like a day time talk show. They aren't even particularly quick to report news these days, your just as well off looking at Twitter, that's most of what they seem to report about these days.

I just feel the that quality of their programming is so low it's not really worth it any more. They keep putting out awful trashy programs to try to compete with the commercial channels. I don't understand why they need to compete with the commercial channels in that way, when they are funded through the license to begin with. Surely there could be other things they could do for ratings. I don't really see why they should be proped up to do such a bad job.

Kurtis_Blue

If you dont need on edont get one, a lot of information is available to you regarding the process on the TVL website,

http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/downloads/what-if-tv-licence-is-not-needed/NoLicenceNeeded.pdf

cajef

giraffe69 wrote: »

If we had no way of raising money for public service broadcasting then it would cease in its current form which is certainly a viable choice.

Plus there are many pensioners and people on low incomes who have no wish to pay Sky or other providers pay to view extortionate prices for dozens of channels they do not want to watch and consider to be rubbish channels.

Ceasing the licence fee and closing the current BBC terrestrial service and coverage would deprive many of these people of their TV viewing.

moneysavingkitten

cajef wrote: »

Plus there are many pensioners and people on low incomes who have no wish to pay Sky or other providers pay to view extortionate prices for dozens of channels they do not want to watch and consider to be rubbish channels.

That I agree with.

cajef wrote: »

Ceasing the licence fee and closing the current BBC terrestrial service and coverage would deprive many of these people of their TV viewing.

That I don't. There would still be channels 3, 4 and 5 without a license, since digital TV came in there are even more than that. If the BBC ceased, because there was no longer a license fee, it would just make space for a few new channels.

cajef

moneysavingkitten wrote: »

That I don't. There would still be channels 3, 4 and 5 without a license, since digital TV came in there are even more than that. If the BBC ceased, because there was no longer a license fee, it would just make space for a few new channels.

OK so how do people view these channels if there are no terrestrial transmitters to broadcast them as the licence fee pays for staff and maintenance of them, who is going the run them or are you suggesting people all view via satellite?

Swan_2

moneysavingkitten wrote: »

None the of the posts really answers my original question There seem to be people here who pay the license and some who don't, but no one has actually declared to TVL that they don't need one? I am still curious about the process of declaring that you don't need one to TVL.

I did it a few years ago, the minute I discovered I didn't need a licence to use my telly for DVDs & gaming!

I just wrote & told them I wouldn't be renewing my licence as I never watched broadcasts, they replied to say that was fine, & that they'd send someone round to check, but in the 3 years* I was licence-free no-one ever showed up


*my son lives with me now, he likes to watch telly, so I have a licence these days