Or, without a static list file:

#!/bin/sh
date=`date +%d%m%Y`
for x in $*              <---- here's the only change needed!
do
y=`basename $x`
tar czvf $y-${date}.tar.gz $x
done
[download]

You could even make this a shell function in your .bash_profile or .bashrc, like so:

function maketar
{
    date=`date +%d%m%Y`
    for x in $* ; do
        y=`basename $x`
        tar czvf $y-${date}.tar.gz $x
    done
}
export -f maketar
[download]

There's (wait for it!) "More Than One Way To Do It." Even before you get into doing it in Perl. :)