Culture minister confirms smartphone tax quadrupling

Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini has confirmed a government plan to raise taxes on smartphones, tablets, PCs and other consumer devices, Telecompaper reports. The taxes include: EUR4 (USD5.44) on smartphones and tablets with memory capacity up to 16GB (up from previous levies of EUR0.90 on smartphones and EUR1.90 on tablets), and EUR6 on PCs (up from EUR1.90). The taxes are designed to fund royalties for the copyright owners of digital content.