MONTREAL – “The Coalition for Culture and Media considers it inconceivable that the Trudeau government – who has been repeating for months that it will not tax Netflix – continues to ignore the amount in lost revenue by not taxing electronic trade,” begins a Tuesday evening press release denouncing the federal government’s position.
The Coalition, which is comprised of nearly 50 cultural associations, unions and other groups, said it was surprised to learn in La Presse that the government “is still not in possession of the financial data calculating the revenue lost annually by its decision not to tax products like Netflix or e-commerce platforms such as Amazon,” continues the release. “This, despite financial advisor Marwah Rizqy calculating this loss at nearly 40 million dollars per year for Netflix alone, just for the federal government. These colossal sums of money, when combined with the amounts the provinces could collect, would allow to support multiple cultural productions, or even finance social programs.”
The coalition says it wants a meeting with Finance Minister Bill Morneau “in order to inform him of the challenges caused by competing foreign companies operating online in the cultural and media sectors. The Coalition hopes to remind him that it is not too late to announce a concrete action plan and reverse this trend before the next budget,” something normally released in late February or early March.
In its Declaration for the sustainability and the vitality of national culture and media in the digital era, published last September, the Coalition outlined what it says would be “fiscal fairness” in taxing e-commerce. The Coalition also wants “regulatory fairness, the continuity of government intervention, as well as the establishment of efficient measures of support for our national culture and media.”
For more on the coalition, go to standingforculture.info.
