Digital products — music, books, video and so on — are an increasing proportion of the total. Subscribe to a Canadian-based video or music streaming service, you pay federal and provincial sales tax. On the surface, then, it makes sense that Netflix, Google and other foreign-based digital service providers should be required to collect and remit sales taxes, as the Commons trade committee has just recommended. This is not the same as the much-discussed, much-rejected idea of a “Netflix tax,” the notion that Netflix should be obliged to contribute to the upkeep of its competitors in the endlessly cosseted Canadian television industry via some special levy. But neither should they — or Canadian consumers — be unfairly penalized.

Source: National Post April 28, 2018 00:45 UTC