Voices

Greece Rethinks Tax on Online Advertising

While Greece is confronting a sharp economic downturn and a severe budget deficit, one thing the country apparently won’t be doing is imposing a tax on online ads.

According to a report in The New York Times, the Greek government dropped its plans to impose a 21.5 percent tax on online ad revenues of news sites based in the country. The money would have gone to support a pension fund for online journalists, a cause that would be dear to my heart, if I worked for a Greek news site that is.

Greece already imposes such a tax on print and TV advertising, but publishers have managed to exploit a loophole and steer their ad billings through their online operations. That has left many of Greece’s online journalists effectively without a pension.

Unfortunately the way things seem to be going with Greece’s economy lately, many other workers are also worried about losing the pensions they once thought they had.

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