The government is considering taking legal action against the holders of more than 35,000 television licences which have gone unpaid.
At an annual €34.95 for each licence, the uncollected revenue for one year adds up to roughly €1.2 million.
Although according to the 2008 Household Budgetary Survey Maltese households own nearly 230,000 television sets, a Communications Ministry spokesman said there were only 119,824 licences in existence.
Of these, 35,367 are unpaid while the rest – 84,457 – raked in about €3 million for the government in 2009. The spokesman said the ministry was considering legal action against the defaulters.
But the outstanding amount owed to the government only tells half the story; many people appear to buy television sets without registering them, as indicated by the results of the household survey.
A quick comparison between the number of licences and the number of television sets owned by households reveals that just under half the TV sets are unregistered.
The survey, published earlier this year by the National Statistics Office, gave a breakdown of how many television sets were owned by families. In 2008, 141,840 households owned around 228,880 TV sets and most families, 69,070, had one. A total of 52,800 owned two and 18,000 others said they owned three or more.
These figures show that just over 50 per cent of television sets are licensed, which means the government is losing out on a potential €3.8 million in revenue.
According to the law, each new television set has to be registered with the government.
The levy was initially introduced to directly subsidise the national television station. However, following the restructuring of state television a few years ago, the Public Broadcasting Service stopped collecting licence money and this task was taken over by the Communications Ministry.
Two years ago, the government proposed removing the licence fee as a fiscal measure in the 2008 pre-Budget document. However, this proposal was never mentioned in subsequent budgets.
When asked if there were plans to remove the fee and why it had not been removed two years ago, the spokesman said: “Decisions will be announced when they are taken.”