Spain Taxes Sunlight

'Taxman' by George Harrison:

If you drive a car I'll tax the street
If you try to sit I'll tax your seat
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat
If you take a walk I'll tax your feet

Once the Photography and Movie industries hear about this, you'd better not even think of holding your smartphone up and snapping a pic.

Wouldn't it be awesome if the government had to justify their spending like business do? I bet the tax level would drop very quickly under that condition.

In a sense, we are doing the same in the US.

I think most of us are interested in "green" technology, and would be happy to become energy self-sufficient, and not have to rely on the umbilical cord to the grid.

I've always thought that smaller was better; rooftop solar, or other methods of energy production for homes, neighborhoods, or small communities. We never see those options pushed very hard...all we seem to see are massive wind and solar farms; along with the inefficient distribution lines that come with them.

I think that a valid argument could be made, that Spain is taxing freedom itself. Don't you dare become self sufficient!!!!

Interesting...Spain's commitment to battling climate change, sounds eerily familiar.

http://www.eea.europa.eu/soer/countries/es/soertopic_view?topic=climate%20change

Solar calculators included???

What about toys, boys?

Gosh you get the idea!

No telling, but I'll betcha that it would apply to personal windmills. I don't know if wind power is viable in Spain.

One would imagine, that if a person is caught operating an illegal solar panel without paying taxes and refuses to pay, they would be subject to criminal prosecution and jail time.

Scary stuff.

...which time may well be of greater value than the tax that would otherwise have been collected...

I could see some civil disobedience arising out of this.

What's the word on the street, in the UK?

I would imagine the citizenry of the other EU nations are a little nervous...especially the ones with solar panels.

Sound like Maryland's new rain tax.

Rain tax?

Oh yeah...they have that in Virginia too...

One of the dumbest things I've heard of....but then...dumb goes hand in hand with elected officials these days.

Yes: Actually it is a run off tax. Your property is X, therefore you will generate Y amount of runoff when it rains. This runoff flows into the sewerage system and must be treated.

Makes no difference even if you have a "water garden". As for the Solar panel tax, CA is having this problem. They pay consumers close to retail for the electricity they produce, the end result is they are not paying for the grid. The grid charges are then passed on to the folks w/o solar or businesses.

MD has an interesting "sewer tax", it even applies to folks with cesspools, it is called a flush tax.

The problem is this money is used to buy more votes, rather than reduce existing taxes or pay down debt.

It will be that way until the system breaks.

Here in Maryland, our taxes have taxes. We have so many new taxes and fees under Owe'Malley, I just can't wait to retire so I can leave this damned state. I actually kind of like Maryland geographically, I can't stand its government.

Whatever you do, please DON'T vote for Owe'Malley for President. Arrogance is his middle name.

I'm not far across the state line in Virginia....thankful I moved to virginia years ago. Though we have our share of stupidity here too....just not nearly as bad.

I agree.....I shake my head how they are allowing that to happen in MD.

More justification to support imposing a tax on people in political office.

Spain is in a similar financial peril that Greece and Portugal are in now.

The situation may get worse, but the good news right now is that unemployment has dropped to 26.3%.

It's not hard to imagine the the Spanish government is in real turmoil trying to collect enough revenue to support its expenditures. Taxing breath, as someone pointed out, might be next if they can find a way to do it. Actually, it will probably be what you exhale that they tax - CO2.

Under normal situations you would expect such an entity to reduce its spending. However, the populace expects the government benefits to keep flowing or riots will take place, so there is no chance of that. We saw what happened in Greece.

I suppose that if one wanted to really protest government taxes you could simply wind up your cuckoo clock and turn the hands back about 100 or so years; living as their great, great grandparents did.

That will work until the goat flatulence tax passes.

Or the goat manure tax......

I suspect that unemployment will continue to drop...

Now that a new breed of criminal has been born, (virtually over night), it will require a slew of highly trained solar inspectors to catch them and fine them.

Here, we call it job creation.

Wonder how much they are going to fine the people with suntans that don't have their sun tax sticker on their forhead.

I can see the tax collectors walking the nations beachs demanding to see peoples suntaning liscneses.

Who said the Spanish Empire was finished? They now own the sun.

Senseless move to loot the people to fill up their empty pockets. There will be tax on air soon, also on the any item which is sustainable and produced by nature.

I guess there's a rain tax in some places; also, here in the US, people are toying with the idea of putting water meters on private wells, and charging for the water used.

I have a well that feeds my house, and I would highly discourage anyone from attempting to install a meter on it.

Never pay for any tax for any service that has not been provided by the authorities. In future bankrupt govts will tax for living, birth, death etc.

Hi,

A couple of years ago, an acquaintance told me about the home he had purchased in Arizona, complete with a complete solar array. Sounded wonderful ... until he described the details. The only caveat is, I can't remember all the details now ... maybe someone of greater knowledge can fill in the blanks.

First, it regarded the benefits of installing energy-saving devices such as tax credits, refunds, and so forth. Apparently, the system had been installed by a contractor whose financial arrangement was to keep all the bonuses.

Second, the ever-sunny state of Arizona, there is a limit on how much energy you can generate ... it is a percentage of what you normally historically over some prior period of time.

Lastly (there's probably more, but I can't recall), while his system was designed to put back to the grid any overages, it was nothing like "running the meter backwards" or anything close to a one-for-one offset of your billing. What you use is a X per kwh, and what went back to the grid was at the power company's cost to purchase energy. Yes, that sort of makes sense, but on the other hand it isn't much of an offset to the consumer's cost of energy.

I'm not a fanatic about all the programs claiming to "save the planet", but I am as conscientious and thoughtful as I can be where there are viable decisions to be made that have some hope of improving what is "today", and preserving what is "tomorrow", but all this seems very counter-productive to the overall scheme. If the larger majority of normal folks are to embrace such, there has to be something that offers a viable payback.

Kind regards ...

That was the point of the original post, that the purpose of the tax has nothing to do with improving one's impact on the planet.

The root of it is a mechanism for the ruling party to maintain power after many years of promising more than they could deliver to the voting constituents.

It's the same with the carbon exchange schemes and everything else...at the end of the day, it's about money.

And you're right, big systems are going to crash on themselves, for any change to come about. Every government on the planet is addicted to being in charge and continually growing.

I feel very bad for the young people.

A lot of the cost of gasoline is tax. And I like to avoid tax by getting around 50 MPG in my automobile. I always smile at the Humvee drivers.

All we have to do to solve the obesity problem here is to weigh each wage earner and tax by the kilogram!