Thai Visa Reports: New Luxury tax on internet usage in Thailand

The Thai Visa Forums had a very disturbing news story posted this morning. I have come to rely on the forums for a great place for breaking news. And every time something of note happens in Thailand (especially related to foreigners living here), they send an email notifying me that the news had been posted on the site. I highly recommend the service to anyone interested in current events in Thailand.

(But, of course it is still a open Internet forum, and after a page or so of worthwhile comments on the news story by readers, the conversation quickly unravels and is mostly uninteresting. But the initial news post is almost always of interest.)

Back to this morning's story. The headline in my email inbox was "New Luxury Tax On Internet Usage In Thailand". That in itself is not too surprising, but the amount of the tax is nothing short of shocking. The article says:

The government has announced heavy investment to upgrade Thailand's international bandwidth, but has introduced an internet tax to help fund investment, and control usage.

The internet tax will be based on bandwidth and would be applied on a graduated scale according to the speed of a users internet connection. The internet luxory tax will be 970 Baht/month for most users.

I pay about 900 baht (about US$25) per month for my DSL, so that means my Internet fees will be doubling!

And it only gets worse: "In addition to the bandwidth tax, an extra usage tax of 490 Baht (US$14)will be levied on those using Bittorrents and surfing foreign language internet forums." Unbelievable!

Every successive paragraph makes the situation more and more dire. Not only is the tax expensive, but it will definitely hurt Thai people the most. Internet cafes will go out of business. No one will be able to afford Internet in their homes. Is this a way to keep the people of Thailand uneducated and in the dark about the world around them? If so, perhaps this uncertain political situation is worse than I thought.

Eventually though, the story got so outrageous that I finally realized what was going on. My anger and frustration quickly turned to amusement and I couldn't help but laugh out loud at my "predicament".

Signed,
An April Fool

The full text of the article can be found on the Thai Visa Forum at New Luxury tax on internet usage in Thailand