Rundfunkbeitrag: Germany's state leaders give green light to raise TV tax

The Rundfunkbeitrag — or television license fee, which every household living in Germany is required to pay — could rise soon.

On Wednesday, the leaders of Germany’s 16 states cleared the way for the amount of money people contribute to the Rundfunkbeitrag to go up by signing the interstate broadcasting agreement.

The increase in the broadcasting fee is now likely to rise by 86 cents to €18.36 per month from January 2021.

However, the change in law must go through all state parliaments before it comes into force. And there may be some resistance from the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. State Premier Reiner Haseloff signed the agreement on Wednesday, but said he could not guarantee a majority in the Magdeburg state parliament. […]

The tax requires every household to pay €17.50 per month towards the Beitragsservice, which is the public service institution in charge of German public broadcasters on TV and radio. …

On June 4th 2020, the grand coalition, made up of Angela Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), agreed on a €130 billion economic stimulus package aimed at kick-starting the economy and supporting people in Germany.

Among the plans are a €300 Kinderbonus for all families, support for business owners, reduced electricity costs as well as a value added tax reduction.

https://www.thelocal.de/20200612/what-to-know-about-germanys-planned-vat-reduction

The Germans had to ‘dump’ the old method of numbers mattering. You had too many radios and TVs showing up and people refusing to be cooperative about the quantity. Adding onto it...young people were starting to use smart-phones, laptops and computers. So between 10 and 20 years ago, they went to the media-tax instead. This tax basically says that quantity doesn’t matter.

To be in my German home and look at the quantity of ‘receivers’...there’s probably a dozen radios, and maybe six items that receive TV of some type.

The growing problem is that German youth (age 30 and below) have given up on a lot of public TV offerings. The committee over public TV ordered them to create a youth-theme network a decade ago. That network was a total failure. So three years ago, they ordered the public TV controller (ARD) to create a new network for young people, which they did....but you can only get it via streaming TV. Their idea is that Amazon and Netflex works this way, and their offering will go the same way.

German ‘kids’ say they don’t care about cop-murder dramas, gameshows, or National Geographic type shows. They want science fiction and action themes. Neither have been accomplished well by German public TV over the past forty years.

The fear going on...enough of the anti-public TV people are accumulating, and it’s only a matter of ten years before enough voters will exist, and force this to be a national agenda item....either dumping half the public TV offerings, or curtail them entirely. The ‘board of governors’ overseeing public TV has continually warned ARD of the approaching crisis.

At least they know they are paying for it directly. It is better than here if they are getting an itemized bill for the service.

I wonder if there is any way to get out of it. Like if you live somewhere you can’t get broadcast service? Doesn’t make sense to pay for something you can’t get.

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