After France’s controversial move, now Canada has made it clear that it would be levying the contentious digital service tax. This tax is aimed at huge international digital companies like Google and Amazon. Canada’s Finance Minister said that his Government would go with this tax even after the U.S. said that it would impose retaliatory tariffs on France’s similar attempts.
Canada’s Finance Minister Bill Morneau said, “We’ve been very clear that we want to make sure that digital companies pay their fair share of taxes in our country. So that means we will move forward.”
It should be noted that imposing an extra 3% digital tax on international digital companies was on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s electoral promise. As per his promise, Canada would impose the tax on international companies with worldwide revenue of at least C$1 billion ($752 million) or Canadian revenue of more than C$40 million from April 1.
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The proposed Canadian tax resembles the French tax that has been the bone of contention between the French Government and the American Government. The French tax aims at taxing the large digital companies on the revenue generated through online ad sales and user data sales.
After the confirmation on the news about digital tax from France, the U.S. said it would be considering imposing 100% duty on French imports like champagne, handbags, etc. The total of French imports to the U.S. amounts to 2.4 billion USD. As per an investigation by the American Government, the new tariff by the French Government would impact the big American companies like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple.
The Canadian Finance Minister said that the final form of tax would be determined after consulting Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and many other nations that may be interested so that the new tax will have no loopholes.
Minister Morneau said, “These companies are international and we want to make sure they pay their fair share of tax and don’t find a way around it.”
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As per the Finance Minister, Canada’s new Government is all set to present a major fiscal update before Christmas. Generally, Governments provide fiscal updates if there is any renewed and fresh forecasts or any major change in the fiscal policy.
