The license fee disproportionately affects poor households

The argument

This argument objects to the licence fee on grounds of its structure rather than its purpose or its size. A flat licence fee is a regressive tax: because every household is charged the same amount regardless of means, the charge represents a different burden depending on who pays it. That is what regressivity means in practice — the proportion of a household's income taken rises as income falls. The figures make the point concrete. For a wealthy household, £154.50 is loose change: an amount that can be paid without displacing anything else in the budget, and which may not register as a decision at all. For a poor household the same £154.50 makes up a sizeable share of the monthly outgoings, which means it has to be found from somewhere, and whatever it displaces is a real reduction in something the household needed. Identical in nominal terms, the charge is unequal in every respect that matters to the person paying it. The unfairness is compounded by the fact that payment is mandatory. A household cannot decline the charge by declining the service without forgoing television altogether, so the regressive burden is not the result of a choice that could be made differently. That the problem lies in the structure rather than in the institution is shown by the existence of a remedy. The licence could be administered progressively — tied to annual household income, so that poorer households pay less and wealthier households pay more, with the same total raised. Since a fairer design is available and has not been adopted, the present arrangement cannot be defended as a necessity. Because the flat fee disproportionately burdens poor households, the BBC licence should not be mandatory.

Context

Administering a license fee at a flat rate of £154.50 per year makes it a larger burden on poorer households.

Premises

Counter-arguments

This isn’t an argument against the fee being mandatory. It is merely an argument against the fees structure. It would be easy to build a more progressive fee system that is more fairly administered that is still mandatory.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] This is not an argument against a mandatory license fee.