[jonathanlydall]

In South Africa we have a TV license which any shop selling TV’s is required by law to report the buyer’s TV license number for any purchase.

The idea is that it funds public broadcasting and productions thereof, but like a lot of SOEs here, there is loads of corruption and inefficiencies, I only use my TV for streaming of content which is not produced locally, so I resent having to pay it each year.

However, it’s apparently a mission to get off it, even if you sell your TV you’re most certainly going to be harassed for years by debt collectors and what not.

Unlike your case though (where I expect the fine is not nothing), it’s only like R250/y (like 13USD) and they’ve smartly (which is surprising for an otherwise largely incompetent org), made it easy to pay. I get an SMS reminder and can have paid it by credit card within 2 minutes. So I’ll probably not bother trying to get off it as it’s so much more effort and a pretty small amount of money and hassle.

[beAbU]

Heh, took me about a year after moving from SA to Ireland to get them to leave me alone about my tv license.

Here they have a tv license as well, but so far I've sidestepped it because I shipped my TV over, but one day I'll probably need to pay for one again. Only problem is now its something like 250 euro, not Ront, so it's a lot more pricey!

[jonathanlydall]

I'd rather pay EUR 250 a year when I know the money is used for genuine public benefit rather than ZAR 250 a year where it's mostly enriching people who don't do anything of real value.