RSSApple to Refund Canadian iPod Levy
By Ed Oswald | Published August 9, 2005, 10:31 AM
Apple Canada announced on Monday that it would happily refund money collected for a tax imposed on iPods and other similar digital music devices. This comes after a Thursday Canadian Supreme Court ruling sided with a lower court that overturned the tax late last year.
A fee of anywhere from $2 for under 1GB to $25 for over 10GB capacity was placed on digital music players from December 2003 to December 2004 under the law, which had been successfully lobbied for by the Canadian music industry. "Apple is pleased that the Supreme Court of Canada let stand a lower court ruling that blank media levies on iPods are invalid," the company said in a statement.
What is the point of that? A sin tax on blank media because they know you are going to use it for music? Is that how they figure it?
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|Nobody knows anywhere in the country why this tax was "really" put on blank cds. For myself I look at it as another tax grab. For the most part the interesting way around the tax is to purchase the blanks from the U.S. and hope that customs misses it, which they do 99% of the time. The other point is that we are guilty until proven innocent in Canada, a country that used to be a democracy. And since no company or person has challenged the legality of the law, the way iPod did, we will continue to pay the tax. To add insult to injury we pay anywhere from 7 to 15% for the Goods & Services Tax on top of the other tax. We lovingly refer to it as the Gouge and Screw Tax.
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|Hey wait I am a Canadian and how about the levy we pay on blank CDs? Not everyone seems to charge it which is really odd for Canadians. However when a store does the cost of 50 blank CDs goes up to over 1 dollar per disk!! Keep in mind that Canada is one step from being the same kind of government that fell when the Berlin Wall went down.
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|"Keep in mind that Canada is one step from being the same kind of government that fell when the Berlin Wall went down."
Now, that is as an incorrect statement as I've ever heard. The levy on recordable media allows you to legally download stuff off of the internet as long as it is for personal use only. Canada respects the privacy of its citizen far more than the USA does its own.
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|How can u say that in a country that considers u guilty first and then innocent? What about the thousands of us that use blank cds or dvds to back up our workplace files? This levy is a joke and everybody knows it except for our overpaid civil servants and government officials who passed this insane law before consulting the business people such as me. With over 20 computer stations each invidual is responsible to making backups. The levy has nothing to do with musicians who never see the money it is simply a tax grap from a corrupt governemt.
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|Whos more stupid the Candaians for paying a couple extra cents on recordable media or the U.S for giving the RIAA so much power.
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|The tax allows us to download music, and the like, as long as we use it for personal use only. That is why the RIAA can't really do anything up here.
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|Stupid Canadians? Wait - is Apple a Canadian company?
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|They put a music tax on the iPod because it plays music? And how dows the iPod compare to blank media?
Stupid Canadians, Ay!
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|I think that would be "Stupid Canadians, Eh", but you would have to be as smart as a Canadian to know that.
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