Tax for another government television station?

[MisterMatlock]

The Nation

Cabinet backs move for tobacco, alcohol taxes to pay for independent station

Up to 1.5 per cent of "sin" taxes would be utilised to sustain TITV after it received Cabinet endorsement yesterday to operate as a commercial-free public TV station.

"We consider that 1.5 per cent from the sin tax, no more than Bt2 billion, should be enough for TITV's operations," Finance Minister Chalongphop Sussangkarn told reporters.

"The working committee estimated that 1.5 per cent would be about Bt1.5 billion, as annual tobacco and alcohol excise-tax collection is about Bt100 billion," he said.

TITV's financing would follow the model for the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, which was set up in 2001 outside the bureaucratic process by the Health Promotion Foundation Act, he said.

ThaiHealth runs on an annual budget of Bt2 billion from excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco products.

The allocation for TITV would not cause difficulties for the treasury, as the amount is deemed not too high nor too little, he said.

This is an extraordinary case, he said. The Finance Ministry normally would not agree to any law that directs the use of tax revenue, but this is a special case for better social balance.

The gov't cries poor about their health system and then go ahead and raise taxes on "sin items" so they can fund a television station? I guess the priority is a TV station to broadcast "gov't news" and crappy talk/game/drama shows. Wouldn't want to use that new tax money to pay for foreign drugs whose patents can be "reappropriated". Any comments?

[sunsnow]

I believe this is some sort of plan by Thaksin and Yoda. QED Carry on.

Soap operas are good! More ghosts and evil spirits! Free media besides produces crap like Fox... There is number of succesful goverment owned public broadcasting radio and tv stations around the world. Ofcourse there is issues when it comes those medias investigating some government actions, there might come problems with partiality and ability to do investigative reporting, but most times public broadcasting guarantees quality documentaries, news and reporting when the private media airs many times just cheap entertainment. You know, government owned tvs show those "high cultural" value programming etc and hmm, in Finlands case also olympics, world cup of soccer and icehockey matches...

But yeah, from what I understand, issue here is that in Thailands case government owned channels really have looked more like commercial channels and their programming has been accordinly very hmm, viewer friendly. So, this post is to be taken with a hint of sarcasm.