Media fee must be fair

In Finland the introduction of media fees to be levied on all households and replace television licences is under discussion. Voitto Rissanen warns in the east Finnish daily Savon Sanomat that this fee should be tailored to people's income: "The financing of public broadcasting needs alternatives. A fair solution would be to levy it as a special fee on taxable income, as with the local tax. This fee could, like health insurance, be written off as a pre-tax deduction. The precise amount to be charged would be stipulated by the parliament. … The assessment basis for calculating the fee should be fair. It makes little sense to burden low-income households with overly high fees on the one hand and give them social benefits on the other."

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