ACCORDING TO REPORTS from France this week, the country will enact a new levy on all providers of online video, beginning January 1, 2018.
According to a story in French newspaper Le Monde, a tax of 2% on revenues earned in the country will be applied to any company providing free or paid videos on the Internet, which will include such heavyweights as Netflix, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. Such a tax has been applied for more than two decades on French broadcasters, pay-per-view and VOD companies.
The monies collected are meant to go to creators to help fund the creation of French content through its national film commission.
We bet Canadian creators will have this in mind when they hear Canadian Heritage Minister Melanie Joly present her vision of Canadian content in a digital world this Thursday, as we previewed in a story last week.
