Election 2019: The "Netflix Tax" May Be Hiding In Plain Sight

In our recent post,we surveyed the various proposals in the Liberal Party of Canada 2019 Election Platform. This post does a deeper dive on a specific tax reform proposal in the election platform aimed at the digital sector. Under the weighty heading "New Revenue: Making Taxes More Fair," the election platform promises that "multinational tech giants [must] pay corporate tax on the revenue they generate in Canada ... to ensure that international digital corporations whose products are consumed in Canada collect and remit the same level of sales taxation as Canadian digital corporations."

The proposed corporate tech tax is notionally modeled after a similar proposal put forward by the French government, which contemplates a 3% tax on the income of businesses operating in the digital sector, in particular "targeted advertising services" and "digital intermediation services". The tax would apply to businesses with worldwide revenues of at least $1 billion and Canadian