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Osbourne scraps 50p broadband tax on land lines in 2010 Budget

In today’s 2010 budget, George Osbourne scrapped the controversial plans from the last Government to introduce a 50p tax on phonelines to help fund future investment in broadband in the UK.

Earlier this year, previous Chanceller Alistair Darling confirmed the plans for a 50p broadband tax, whilst the (then) Tories said they would abolish the tax if they got into power.

The current Chancellor George Osbourne stated that surplus funds from the digital switchover will be used. There were hints from the previous Labour Government that they may look also look at using surplus funds, but this was in addition to a broadband levy on landlines.

In his 2010 Budget speech earlier today, the Chancellor said: “The previous government’s landline duty is an archaic way of achieving this, hitting 30 million households who happen to have a fixed telephone line. I am happy to be able to abolish this new duty before it is even introduced.”

He also talked about plans to use some of that digital switchover surplus to fund three new pilot programmes to bring superfast broadband services in “hard-to-reach” areas – likely to be rural areas.

Earlier this year,