Canada’s digital sales tax will be used as leverage in US trade talks
Canada and the US continue to talk about trade in the wake of The Orange Menace’s crazy and unpredictable tariff moves. One of the things the US hates is our government’s plans to levy a tax on digital companies.
Not everyone, of course. To face the 3% digital sales tax, these companies (Spotify, Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Meta, Uber, Airbnb, and a few others) have to extract at least $20 million from Canada and have global revenues of no less than $1.1 billion. The first payments are due June 30 and should amount to about $2 billion.
Naturally, these multi-billion and multi-trillion-dollar companies are whining about this, even though we’re dealing with couch cushion change as far as they’re concerned. US trade reps are crying foul, too, as well as businesses associated with digital products. They claim they’ll just pass along the costs to customers.
Leaving the tax in place will piss off Trump. But when it comes to negotiating America’s insane 50% tariff on Canadian aluminum and steel, this could be used as a bargaining chip. But let’s hope that some aspect of the tax survives because it’s important to the future health and well-being of Canadian culture, broadcasting, and news.
PM Mark Carney and Trumpy have set a deadline of mid-July to come to some sort of economic and security deal in this stupid Trump-created trade war that’s dragged on for the last 100 days.
