Television licence

A television licence or broadcast receiving licence is an official record of payment required in many countries for the reception of television broadcasts, or the possession of a television set where some broadcasts are funded in full or in part by the licence fee paid. The licence is sometimes also required to own a radio or receive radio broadcasts. A TV licence is therefore effectively a hypothecated tax for the purpose of funding public broadcasting, thus allowing public broadcasters to transmit television programmes without, or with only supplemental, funding from radio and television advertisements. However, in some cases the balance between public funding and advertisements is the opposite - the Polish TVP broadcaster receives more funds from advertisements than from its TV tax.

Whilst TV licensing is rare in the Americas, half of the countries in Asia, a few countries in Africa, and two-thirds of the countries in Europe use television licences to fund public television.

Television licensing in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom and the Crown Dependencies, any household watching or recording live television transmissions as they are being broadcast (terrestrial, satellite, cable, or internet) is required to hold a television licence. Businesses, hospitals, schools and a range of other organisations are also required to hold television licences to watch and record live TV broadcasts. Since 1 April 2010 the annual licence fee has been £145.50 for colour and £49.00 for black and white. Income from the licence is primarily used to fund the television, radio and online services of the BBC. The total income from licence fees was £3.735 billion in 2014–15 of which £613.4 million or 16.4% was provided by the Government through concessions for those over the age of 75. Thus, the licence fee made up the bulk of the BBC's total income of £4.805 billion in 2014–2015.

Operation of the licensing system

Licence fee collection and use

The TV licence fee is a tax collected by the BBC and primarily used to fund the radio, television and online services of the BBC itself. This type of tax (ie. one raised for a particular defined purpose) is known as a hypothecated tax. Licence Fee collection is the responsibility of the BBC's Finance and Business division.