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-... 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@sizone.org Guelph Canada