Stuck Inside London With the Mobile Blues

London likes to boast that it is the financial capital of the world. Can it still make that claim if the use of the ubiquitous tool of bankers and traders -- the BlackBerry -- is curtailed?

Coming on the heels of a proposal to tax wealthy "non-doms," or foreign residents of Britain, a new interpretation of a tax policy may also send a chill throughout the City.

The British web site Here Is the City reports that "several City-based insurance broking houses" have been informed that the tax man now considers a BlackBerry a computer, rather than a mobile phone.

The difference is important because the British tax agency, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, decided in April 2006 to allow exemptions for the personal use of company mobile phones, but to discontinue them for use of computers.

Apparently, the BlackBerry's email and browser functions push it into the computer category. (That would be true for the iPhone were ever to become a corporate phone.)

"Consequently companies will have to monitor how much non-work related e-mail and Internet use each user 'enjoys' to assist in calculating each user's personal taxable benefit," Here in the City contends.

Taxation may just be the cure of a CrackBerry addiction.