Post by Teddy Bear on Jul 14, 2010 16:47:52 GMT
It's always heartening to hear that more and more people seek to avoid paying the BBC. Makes me think our society is becoming more intelligent than it might seem otherwise. I notice that not one of the comments posted under this article seem to think the BBC is good value for money, nad in fact would prefer to see the licence fee abolished altogether.
My guess is that management will continue to perform much as they have done of late, knowing they are on a sinking ship and skimming as much as they can while they can.
For anybody wanting to find out more about their rights in evading this lousy tax, I always recommend going to this site BBC Resistance which you might find enlightening.
My guess is that management will continue to perform much as they have done of late, knowing they are on a sinking ship and skimming as much as they can while they can.
For anybody wanting to find out more about their rights in evading this lousy tax, I always recommend going to this site BBC Resistance which you might find enlightening.
The real rate of BBC licence fee evasion is shocking
Payment of the TV licence has become voluntary, like inheritance tax: paid only by those who love the BBC, writes David Elstein.
By David Elstein
Published: 10:38AM BST 14 Jul 2010
16 Comments
The readers’ pages of our newspapers regularly carry stories about the ruthless behaviour of TV Licensing, the arm of the BBC responsible for collecting licence fees from homes with televisions. Households with no TV set report sustained TV Licensing letter campaigns, with rising levels of threat. Magistrates bemoan the burden on the courts of a constant stream of evaders being prosecuted. Civil libertarians are shocked by a sinister poster campaign from TV Licensing boasting “we know where you live”. Non-payers are warned of the dangers of ending up with a criminal record.
The level of prosecutions is certainly substantial: 168,800 in 2008/9, constituting 30% of all non-motoring summary cases. Estimates are that 28 per cent of evaders are single parents, mostly female, and that 55 per cent of female single parents live in extreme poverty. Anecdotal evidence is that TV Licensing targets known offenders, waiting for them to fall into arrears again, and then launching a new prosecution.
Yet careful reading of the BBC’s latest Annual Report reveals a very different state of affairs. The BBC records 25.459m licences, but also admits to a 5.2 per cent evasion rate, which equates to 1.324m evaders. If we assume that the rate of 168,800 prosecutions for evasion the previous year continued in 2009/10, and that all were successful, we can calculate that there were 1.493m evaders in total, of whom just 11.3 per cent were actually caught. Given that of the 25.459m licences in issue 4.008m were paid for by the government, on behalf of exempted over-75-year-olds, and that 68 per cent of the remainder paid by direct debit, the true evasion rate was much higher than 5.2 per cent. Eliminating the over-75s and the direct debit homes reveals that the households who needed to be pursued by TV Licensing numbered just 6.775m: so the total evasion rate was 22 per cent, and the successful evasion rate was 19.5 per cent.
Of course, it is possible that TV Licensing turns a blind eye to much of this evasion, to avoid a situation where court proceedings for TV licence evasion exceed the entire total for all prosecutions for indictable and summary offences, swamping our legal system – especially as the BBC makes no contribution to the court costs incurred by these prosecutions.
Whatever the truth of that conjecture, the reality is that payment of the TV licence has become voluntary, like inheritance tax: paid only by those who love the BBC, by those who dislike breaking the law or by those who cannot be bothered to fend off what turn out to be hollow threats of prosecution. Of course, cancelling a direct debit and then not paying the licence fee would alert the doziest of pursuers, but anyone moving home or not paying by direct debit can certainly contemplate not paying until an actual prosecution is imminent. There is no penalty for paying up late (though the BBC imposes a £5 fee for those who want to pay quarterly), provided you make up for any arrears you may have accumulated.
Evasion costs the BBC in excess of £180m a year, on top of collection costs of £126.5m. Put it another way: evaders add £7.50 to the cost of the TV licence for those who actually pay. The BBC is also highly sensitive to cash flow pressures. The TV licence fee is one of the few charges in society which has to be paid in advance. Any trend towards late payment would put severe pressure on the BBC’s tightly restricted borrowing capacity. It might also put doubt in the minds of BBC creditors, especially when reminded that – according to the Annual Report – only 58 per cent of people think the licence fee is good value for money.
It so happens that the report also reveals a huge deficit in the BBC’s pension fund, of over £1.6bn, which in turn has pushed the BBC’s consolidated balance sheet deep into the red, for the first time in living memory. The growing concern section of the Report confirms that the auditors are relaxed, on the basis that the licence fee is guaranteed to be paid through to April 2013, and is expected to be renewed thereafter. The developers of the new £1bn BBC headquarters in Portland Place only signed their deal with the BBC on the basis of written assurances from ministers that the BBC – and the licence fee – had decades of government assurance.
Yet the truth is that the licence fee faces a potential crisis once digital switchover is complete in 2012. The rapid roll-out of broadband, and the widespread take-up of catch-up services like the BBC i-player, has made it far easier to gain access to BBC content without having to pay the licence fee at all, as it only applies to users of live TV content. Take-up of high definition TV will keep the market for TV sets vibrant, but many single-person households – whose numbers run into millions – may calculate that owning a computer with fast broadband makes keeping an old-fashioned TV-only screen an expensive anachronism.
Ministers have in recent years openly questioned whether the licence fee is a sustainable means of funding the BBC in the future. The realisation that TV Licensing is a tiger with rather weak teeth will concentrate minds even more on this issue. Planning for a switch to encryption and subscription – which eliminates the evaders – may prove to be rather more attractive than just waiting for the system to fall into disrepute.
Payment of the TV licence has become voluntary, like inheritance tax: paid only by those who love the BBC, writes David Elstein.
By David Elstein
Published: 10:38AM BST 14 Jul 2010
16 Comments
The readers’ pages of our newspapers regularly carry stories about the ruthless behaviour of TV Licensing, the arm of the BBC responsible for collecting licence fees from homes with televisions. Households with no TV set report sustained TV Licensing letter campaigns, with rising levels of threat. Magistrates bemoan the burden on the courts of a constant stream of evaders being prosecuted. Civil libertarians are shocked by a sinister poster campaign from TV Licensing boasting “we know where you live”. Non-payers are warned of the dangers of ending up with a criminal record.
The level of prosecutions is certainly substantial: 168,800 in 2008/9, constituting 30% of all non-motoring summary cases. Estimates are that 28 per cent of evaders are single parents, mostly female, and that 55 per cent of female single parents live in extreme poverty. Anecdotal evidence is that TV Licensing targets known offenders, waiting for them to fall into arrears again, and then launching a new prosecution.
Yet careful reading of the BBC’s latest Annual Report reveals a very different state of affairs. The BBC records 25.459m licences, but also admits to a 5.2 per cent evasion rate, which equates to 1.324m evaders. If we assume that the rate of 168,800 prosecutions for evasion the previous year continued in 2009/10, and that all were successful, we can calculate that there were 1.493m evaders in total, of whom just 11.3 per cent were actually caught. Given that of the 25.459m licences in issue 4.008m were paid for by the government, on behalf of exempted over-75-year-olds, and that 68 per cent of the remainder paid by direct debit, the true evasion rate was much higher than 5.2 per cent. Eliminating the over-75s and the direct debit homes reveals that the households who needed to be pursued by TV Licensing numbered just 6.775m: so the total evasion rate was 22 per cent, and the successful evasion rate was 19.5 per cent.
Of course, it is possible that TV Licensing turns a blind eye to much of this evasion, to avoid a situation where court proceedings for TV licence evasion exceed the entire total for all prosecutions for indictable and summary offences, swamping our legal system – especially as the BBC makes no contribution to the court costs incurred by these prosecutions.
Whatever the truth of that conjecture, the reality is that payment of the TV licence has become voluntary, like inheritance tax: paid only by those who love the BBC, by those who dislike breaking the law or by those who cannot be bothered to fend off what turn out to be hollow threats of prosecution. Of course, cancelling a direct debit and then not paying the licence fee would alert the doziest of pursuers, but anyone moving home or not paying by direct debit can certainly contemplate not paying until an actual prosecution is imminent. There is no penalty for paying up late (though the BBC imposes a £5 fee for those who want to pay quarterly), provided you make up for any arrears you may have accumulated.
Evasion costs the BBC in excess of £180m a year, on top of collection costs of £126.5m. Put it another way: evaders add £7.50 to the cost of the TV licence for those who actually pay. The BBC is also highly sensitive to cash flow pressures. The TV licence fee is one of the few charges in society which has to be paid in advance. Any trend towards late payment would put severe pressure on the BBC’s tightly restricted borrowing capacity. It might also put doubt in the minds of BBC creditors, especially when reminded that – according to the Annual Report – only 58 per cent of people think the licence fee is good value for money.
It so happens that the report also reveals a huge deficit in the BBC’s pension fund, of over £1.6bn, which in turn has pushed the BBC’s consolidated balance sheet deep into the red, for the first time in living memory. The growing concern section of the Report confirms that the auditors are relaxed, on the basis that the licence fee is guaranteed to be paid through to April 2013, and is expected to be renewed thereafter. The developers of the new £1bn BBC headquarters in Portland Place only signed their deal with the BBC on the basis of written assurances from ministers that the BBC – and the licence fee – had decades of government assurance.
Yet the truth is that the licence fee faces a potential crisis once digital switchover is complete in 2012. The rapid roll-out of broadband, and the widespread take-up of catch-up services like the BBC i-player, has made it far easier to gain access to BBC content without having to pay the licence fee at all, as it only applies to users of live TV content. Take-up of high definition TV will keep the market for TV sets vibrant, but many single-person households – whose numbers run into millions – may calculate that owning a computer with fast broadband makes keeping an old-fashioned TV-only screen an expensive anachronism.
Ministers have in recent years openly questioned whether the licence fee is a sustainable means of funding the BBC in the future. The realisation that TV Licensing is a tiger with rather weak teeth will concentrate minds even more on this issue. Planning for a switch to encryption and subscription – which eliminates the evaders – may prove to be rather more attractive than just waiting for the system to fall into disrepute.
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