Canada Mulls Internet Tax

Toronto, Ontario (AHN) - The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will conduct public hearings on new media regulations early next year. The main topic of the hearings will be a proposed tax on Internet service providers.

If the planned levy will be approved, it will finance new medial cultural productions. The proposal, which came for several Canadian cultural groups, was for 2.5 percent of broadband income to be collected from Internet service providers.

Among the groups which pushed for the Internet tax were the Canadian Film and Television Production Association, the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists, the Directors Guild of Canada and the Writers Guild of Canada.

To support their argument, the artists groups cited a public opinion poll which stated 69 percent of Canadians are in favor of tapping the ISPs to help finance the production of Canadian digital media content, in the same manner that cable and satellite TV providers partly shoulder the production cost of Canadian TV programs.

The CRTC made public last month two reports on the new media industry. The first report, made by Columbia University finance professors Eli Noam, analyzed the Canadian new media broadcast industry and tackled possible regulatory policy solutions. The second study compiled results of an online consultation on new media collated by Nanos Research.