New Taxes On Streaming?
On New Years Day 2019, residents of Quebec will begin paying a tax on streaming services. And unfortunately the Canadian Radio & Telecommunication Commission is considering a “levy” to fund Canadian programming and a House of Commons committee is asking for sales taxes to be collected on these services.
This would of course raise the price of these services for the consumer, significantly. And these had been opposed by Canadians according to a Open Media poll conducted in early 2017 by the Innovative Research Group.
According to this poll, 70% of the respondents opposed a new tax on internet and mobile phone bills, 51% strongly. And in regards to the implementation of sales taxes on foreign streaming services, 47% of the respondents supported it provided the funds would be used on Canadian content.
CRTC chairman Ian Scott claimed the “levy” itself “would cost less than 50 cents on an average broadband bill of $47” durring a May 31st, 2018 Financial Times interview so they could easily just divert some of the sales taxes to Canadian Content instead. But there has yet to be a response in regards to these “contributions” from Canadian Heritage Minister Mélanie Joly and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who had both claimed there would be no internet taxes.
Please contact your local Member of Parliament on this issue. I will be contacting mine as soon as possible.
Thank you.
Have you rebooted your router yet?
If you have a Linksys, MikroTik, Netgear or TP-Link router, please reboot it as soon as possible. You should also reboot your router if you have a QNAP network attached storage (NAS) device.
Click here to read more on VPNFilter.
May The 4th Be With You
It’s Star Wars Day at Amazon Canada, Amazon International, Barnes & Noble and Indigo/Chapters. And I can’t wait until the release of “Solo” later this month.
I’m mostly a fan of the original, unadulterated films and their soundtracks, although I did like the very recent films, namely The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and Rogue One.
Global Music Report Released
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry released their global music report last Thursday and sales have gone up by 8.1% because of streaming, which had become more popular;Streaming revenues grew by 41% worldwide.
Click here for a link to the official IFPI blog entry on the “State Of The Industry” report.
Did You Miss Record Store Day?
Some of the participating retailers could still have some items on sale for the weekend. And deals can also be found at Amazon.ca, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Booksamillion.com and Records By Mail.
It’s Record Store Day !
For locations and details on what is being offered recordstoreday.ca. And don’t forget to look for those exclusive releases!