Haha this is damn funny
http://news.asiaone.com/News/Latest%2BNews/Asia/Story/A1Story20090909-166740.html
Plan to tax SMS causes uproar in text-crazy
Philippines
Users would be unfairly required to carry burden
for a cash-strapped government. :Consumer group. -AFP
Wed, Sep 09, 2009
AFP
MANILA, PHILIPPINES - Mobile phone text messages
helped cause a revolution in the Philippines. Now the nation's
mobile phone lobby is in uproar again over a multi-million-dollar
plan to tax texting.
A consumer group hit out Wednesday at the planned tax, which is
making its way through parliament, warning the country's 70 million
mobile phone users would be unfairly required to carry the burden
for a cash-strapped government.
"To rebel against this new tax law is justified," TXTPower
leader Anthony Ian Cruz told AFP as he warned legislators seeking
re-election in next year's national polls of a backlash.
The bill, proposing a five-centavo (0.1 cent) tax on every
mobile phone short and multimedia message, could raise more than
half a billion dollars a year.
It has already passed the committee stage of the lower house,
and its proponents are now pushing for it to be endorsed fully by
parliament and signed into law by President Gloria Arroyo.
They argue the money would be used to boost the government's
education budget.
But Cruz pointed out that the government already collected a
12-percent value added tax on mobile phone services.
Instead of imposing the tax, Cruz said the government should cut
wasteful spending and stem the loss of money through political
corruption.
"Congress must exercise restraint in looking for ways and means
to finance government programs and operations," he said.
Industry groups have branded the Philippines as the text capital
of the world on a per capita basis, with up to 300 million messages
criss-crossing phone networks every day.
In 2001, text messaging was used to gather tens of thousands of
people on to the streets for a peaceful revolution that toppled the
graft-tainted presidency of Joseph Estrada.
