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| P.S. There's a wonderful bit of "Swinglish" in the link you provided - "... wenn das live gestreamte Programmangebot ..."  | |
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It's not really Swinglish but correct German. Many English technical terms get carried over to German unaltered. Better than the french way of reinventing the week every time (mégaoctet = megabyte, gratuiciel = freeware... but this is off topic now).
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| Ok, I am still totally confused about this whole situation. Untill my parents got "billag" notification like 2 months ago. I had ZERO idea this even existed. I have lived here for three years and never heard of it. Bought a TV two years ago and have never heard about it. How is one to pay a tax he doesn't even know exists? And why is the fee simply not tacked on the monthly fee you pay for cable?
Also my car has a TV tuner that is unable to receive any programs, do I have to pay for it?
If the bill people come, can I claim I simply never heard about the fee? Which in truth I haven't.
P.S. Does anybody else think this is highway robbery? What other countries this bull caca also exists? | |
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The TV (and soon internet) companies charge for each connection but Billag wants the fee only once per person or household.
According to
this article, radio and TV fees exist all over Europe, plus in the Far East and in South Africa.
There are some arguments for this tax in Switzerland:
- It's a sign of solidarity of the German speaking part of Switzerland to pump hundreds of millions of Francs in the French, Italian and Rhaeto-Romanic programs every year
- Without the tax, Switzerland's language regions would be insignificant appendices of the respective foreign markets and nobody would produce media for them
- The public TV channels have lower advertisement limits and an obligation to provide certain services like news
I'm not a TV junkie but at least I get some news and football games from the SRG...