Qu??bec Sales tax

Tue Mar 27 22:21:12 UTC 2018

If Netflix has no physical presence in Quebec, what the lever are they going
to use to force this? A lawsuit in <state of netflix incorporation> in the
US? What court is going to entertain a foreign jurisdiction's tax claim in
their court? And how would that be then enforced?

Canada has tried this before:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/u-s-judge-puts-halt-to-canadian-court-order-for-google-to-delist-search-results-1.3663055

Court file: https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/16701/index.do

Im a big fan of Canada standing up for its sovereignty (I live here), but nice
try.

/kc

On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 06:10:51PM -0400, Jean-Francois Mezei said:
  >Not quite networking but probably relevant.
  >
  >The Canadian province of Qu??bec just introduced a new budget with
  >basically the intent to force foreign digital companies who sell
  >services to Qu??bekers to collect the local value added sales tax and
  >remit those to the QC government.
  >
  >The goal is to capture tax from Netflix who has so far escaped taxation
  >in Canada by having no legal/physical presence in Canada, no cache
  >servers of its own etc. Netflix does not currently collect province
  >information from customers (or any address info for that matter).
  >
  >They based many of their arguments on an OECD study (which ironically
  >the Canadian federal government says is not completed yet (as excuse for
  >not proceeding with similar tax).
  >
  >So foreign digital services will be required to require subscibers enter
  >AND VALIDATE their address so that they have an accurate province field
  >(validation remains to be finalized), and IF they sell more than $30,000
  >to Qu??bec residents, will be required to self register with QC
  >government to collect local sales tax (and remit to QC government).
  >
  >The Qu??bec budget expects that validation of address will be based on IP
  >address geolocation or custoemrs send paper bills to prove place of
  >residence.
  >
  >(Although requiring full address/phone number and sendint this to credit
  >card network for authorization might constitute a better means to
  >validate address).
  >
  >I suspect the big winners will be VPN services in the USA :-)
  >
  >Because many ISPs span multiple provinces, IP geolocation generally
  >points to their HQ address, not necessarily the province of the
  >subscriber. (This is especially true for DSL in bell Canada wholesale
  >where currently a single point of connection between Bell and ISP allows
  >full reach of all of its DSL territory in QC/ON. For Cable, ISPs require
  >different IP pools for Rogers in Ontario and Vid??otron in Ontario (with
  >a couple of exceptions where Vid??otron has service in a couple fo
  >Ontario towns). In Western Canada, things are harder as Shaw serves BC,
  >AB, SASK and MB.

--
Ken Chase - math at sizone.org Guelph Canada