Post Tagged with: "digital services tax"

President Trump Signs an Executive Order by Trump White House, https://flic.kr/p/2jgs8nP PDM 1.0

Why Years of Canadian Digital Policy Is Either Dead (Prorogation) or Likely to Die (Trump)

The Canadian political and business communities are unsurprisingly focused on the prospect of U.S. President Donald Trump instituting 25% tariffs on Canadian goods and services. The threat of tariffs, which could spark a retaliatory response by Canada and fuel a damaging trade war, would likely cause serious harm to the Canadian economy. But tariffs aren’t the only story arising from new Trump actions in his first day in office. Amidst the many executive orders signed on day one are several with significant implications for Canadian law, particularly Canadian digital policies such as the digital services tax, mandated streaming payments arising from Bill C-11, and mandated payments for news links due to Bill C-18. When combined the government’s decision to prorogue Parliament earlier this month, the results of years of Canadian digital laws and policies now largely fall into two groups: those that have died due to prorogation and those that are likely to die due to Donald Trump.

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January 22, 2025 10 comments News
Our Beloved Phone Company by Dennis S. Hurd (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) https://flic.kr/p/8v9Mm9

The Bill on Canada’s Digital Policy Comes Due: Blocked News Links, Cancelled Sponsorship, Legal Challenges, and Digital Ad Surcharges

Canada’s digital policy has seemingly long proceeded on the assumption that tech companies would draw from an unlimited budget to write bigger cheques to meet government regulation establishing new mandated payments. Despite repeated warnings on Bills C-11 (Internet streaming), C-18 (online news), and a new digital services tax that tech companies – like anyone else – were more likely to respond by adjusting their Canadian budgets or simply passing along new costs to consumers, the government and the bill’s supporters repeatedly dismissed the risks that the plans could backfire. Yet today the bill from those digital policy choices is coming due: legal and trade challenges, blocked news links amid decreasing trust in the media, cancellation of sponsorship deals worth millions of dollars that will be devastating to creators, and a new Google digital advertising surcharge that kicks in next week to offset the costs of the digital services tax.

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September 25, 2024 16 comments News
Robert_Lighthizer_at_Round_1_renegotiation_of_NAFTA, Office of U.S. Trade Representative, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Robert_Lighthizer_at_Round_1_renegotiation_of_NAFTA.jpg

The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 210: Meredith Lilly on the Trade Risks Behind Canada’s Digital Services Tax and Mandated Streaming Payments

The battle over a digital services tax has been the subject of Law Bytes podcast episodes for several years as the Canadian government signalled its intent to move ahead with one even as US officials warned of risks of trade retaliation if they did so outside of an international framework. With the DST now in effect, what does trade law have to say and how might the US respond? Meredith Lilly is a full Professor and Simon Reisman Chair in International Economic Policy at Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. She joins me on the Law Bytes podcast to discuss the current digital trade policy tensions, what our agreements say about complaints and retaliation, as well as explain why a U.S. response on at least the DST seems likely.

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July 22, 2024 8 comments Podcasts
Tax Day New York. April 17, 2012 (7104232285) by Michael Fleshman from Brooklyn, The Democratic People's Republic of Brooklyn, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Know When to Fold Em: The Big Risk Behind Canada’s Digital Services Tax Bet

The Globe and Mail runs my opinion piece on Canada’s digital services tax today. I open by noting that the Canadian government’s efforts to regulate big tech companies sometimes feels like a series of high-stakes poker matches in which the government foolishly bets that readily apparent risks can be ignored. That approach has proven costly: the plan to regulate internet streaming services is now mired in multiple legal challenges in court, while news links on Facebook and Instagram have been blocked in Canada for nearly a year in response to the Online News Act.

The latest high-risk strategy involves the implementation of a digital services tax, which could lead to billions in tariff retaliation targeting some of Canada’s most important economic sectors.

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July 11, 2024 14 comments Columns
Arctic Council Ministerial Dinner by Ulkoministeriö CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 https://flic.kr/p/S3CQxV

Canadian Government Quietly Backs Down on its Implementation Plans for a Digital Services Tax

The federal government has quietly backed down from its plans to implement a new digital services tax as of January 2024 that the Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated would generate billions in revenue. It did not make the headlines or receive much promotion, but after months of insisting that a digital services tax would take effect in Canada in January 2024, the government has now removed that implementation deadline in the Fall Economic Statement. The battle over the proposed tax had sparked increasing anger between Canada and the U.S., with dozens of U.S. Senators and Representatives signing letters urging the government to delay its plans. The Canadian plan remains to establish a retroactive three percent tax that will hit a wide range of businesses, but given fears moving ahead now would jeopardize a global agreement that is designed to address the digital services tax issue, Canada has seemingly faced the obvious reality and backed down.

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November 23, 2023 10 comments News