There’s a hoax that has been circulating for many years, that the government wants a five-cent tax on emails, sort of an electronic stamp.
Over the years, it’s got widespread attention, sometimes even making it onto newspaper pages, with the resulting public backlash you might expect — both for the newspaper getting hoodwinked, but also the very idea that the government might try something like that.
Which makes it all the more amazing that a government committee was calling for a five per cent tax on Internet Services before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shot the idea down late last week.
The email tax hoax dates back to the late 1990s and gives the premise as helping Canada Post, losing millions of dollars in revenue each year as people switched from snail mail to email. The premise for the current, and very real, ISP surcharge suggestion is to help fund Canadian media industries as they struggle to adapt to changing technology and consumer habits.
There is already a levy on cable bills for just this reason. It supports the Canadian Media Fund, which spent nearly $372 million last year on Canadian Television and digital media projects.
But there is a lot of advertising revenue and market share being funnelled to Facebook, Netflix, Google and other international giants as the playing field shifts.
It’s hard not to look at all that revenue and not want a chunk of it, but trying to turn back the clock is not a workable solution.
One thing is certain, though. The email surcharge hoax is not likely to ever go away, but then neither is the greed of governments wanting to divert more of the huge stream of money now flowing through the Internet.
