Alternatives to the SABC TV licence being considered

Daniel Puchert

Daniel Puchert

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Taxes that could replace the SABC TV licence

The South African Broadcasting Corporation's (SABC's) TV licence scheme is failing. The proportion of people avoiding payment has risen sharply in recent years, contributing to the SABC's dismal financial situation.

Various alternatives, including household taxes and levies on local and international streaming services, are being considered to rescue the SABC.
 
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It should not be a household tax/fee! Using SARS to collect this is even worse and will mean that once again, the existing tax base is expected to cough up even more.

If they push this to the streaming providers, I'd be inclined to stop paying for that as well. What happened with the user pays principle? The grandparents use all of the SABC services and pay their licence fees without an issue. We on the other hand dont, so wont.
 
tax on taxes on more taxes to pay for the bloated and inefficient SABC.

people will just stream or pirate freely and very little the SABC can do about it,
if they maybe spent the money on programming and quality, instead of Lambo's and jonnie walker, people might actually pay.
 
ld13 said:
It should not be a household tax/fee! Using SARS to collect this is even worse and will mean that once again, the existing tax base is expected to cough up even more.

If they push this to the streaming providers, I'd be inclined to stop paying for that as well. What happened with the user pays principle? The grandparents use all of the SABC services and pay their licence fees without an issue. We on the other hand dont, so wont.
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I'm against any form of tax collection. The SABC gave away the ability for conditional access so have no right to user pays. Like etollies it also won't be user pays.
 
quovadis said:
Tax the tv's, decoders or any device with built-in tuners.
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Screw that I use my TV for playing games on, the SABC doesn't deserve one cent for that if I'm not watching their k@k.
 
bixt said:
Screw that I use my TV for playing games on, the SABC doesn't deserve one cent for that if I'm not watching their k@k.
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Sure but it's a middle ground. If you don't want to pay then buy the TV without the tuner built in - I'd guess Samsung and LG would be more than happy to save a few bucks on each model.
 
dualmeister said:
I am sick and tired of paying to support their thieving ways :mad:
If only we could chose which political party gets our tax money :X3:
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agreed, I think a lot of people are, but there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon,
fact remains the GNU ensures the ANC cant just railroad things through without backlash and obstacles.
look at the pushback with the VAT increase,

everybody thinks its a joke, but its delaying things hopefully for enough people to notice the ANC thieving ways,
and I'm sure it will go on to more things, as this is democracy in action in front of our very eyes.

that ensures no one parts of faction within one party cant just railroad things through,
so progress of a sort I guess.
 
quovadis said:
Sure but it's a middle ground. If you don't want to pay then buy the TV without the tuner built in - I'd guess Samsung and LG would be more than happy to save a few bucks on each model.
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good luck with that, this has been a challenge for many decades

TVs are mass produced and big companies like Samsung aren't going to customize their assembly line just to help you get around SABC's nonsense license

all their smart TVs come with tuners, failing that you'd need to look at their monitors instead, which are built for PC use and not fit for living room TV watching purposes (also much more expensive per diagonal inch of size than TVs)

Loewe use to be the high end brand for AV nuts producing high end displays without tuners for home cinema, but I've never seen them in South Africa

locally I think one's best bet is to find out where your local shopping mall bought their displays for their display wall if they have one as those are typically tunerless, or buy Mecer :sick:
 
Just shut SABC down already.
Whatever happened to "user pays principle"?
I want DSTV, I pay.
I want Netfix, I pay.
You want SABC, you pay.

Additionally, SABC is inflating numbers:
The SABC billed nearly R5 billion for TV licence fees in 2023/24...
It doesn’t count households that should have a TV licence but don’t.
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According to Stats SA General Household Survey 2023 https://www.statssa.gov.za/?page_id=1854&PPN=P0318&SCH=73897 there are only 14.9m homes with TV's

1745312608942.png

Many of those are indigent or pensioners which reduced the R265 to R74, so the R5 billion (R3.9 billion) is very inflated.
 
NarrowBandFtw said:
good luck with that, this has been a challenge for many decades

TVs are mass produced and big companies like Samsung aren't going to customize their assembly line just to help you get around SABC's nonsense license

all their smart TVs come with tuners, failing that you'd need to look at their monitors instead, which are built for PC use and not fit for living room TV watching purposes (also much more expensive per diagonal inch of size than TVs)

Loewe use to be the high end brand for AV nuts producing high end displays without tuners for home cinema, but I've never seen them in South Africa

locally I think one's best bet is to find out where your local shopping mall bought their displays for their display wall if they have one as those are typically tunerless, or buy Mecer :sick:
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Disagree, I don't see it as a challenge. Plenty of mass-produced hardware is subjected to customisation for specific functionality / versions of it. Heck, the PC field is almost entirely binning of components to meet demands at various price points. I'd guess they could even do it at firmware level with most tv's being smart now.
 
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