U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday he’s terminating all trade discussions with Canada effective immediately.

“We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period,” Trump said in a social media post.

He says he’s pulling back from the bilateral trade discussions because Canada plans to move ahead with its digital services tax (DST), which requires web giants pay a special tax.

Set to take effect on June 30, the DST requires U.S. companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, Uber and Airbnb pay a three per cent levy on revenue from Canadian users — a policy enacted by former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s government that the Parliamentary Budget Office projects will bring in billions of dollars in revenue.

  • @[email protected]
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    4911 days ago

    Set to take effect on June 30, the DST requires U.S. companies like Amazon, Google, Meta, Uber and Airbnb pay a three per cent levy on revenue from Canadian users

    Good.

    • @[email protected]
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      2410 days ago

      It should be a lot higher, honestly. Encourage building Canadian services and using European services instead of relying on predatory American monopolies.

      • @[email protected]
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        2410 days ago

        3% of revenue is a substantial number.

        However, even better:

        The tax, which will take effect on 30 June and be applied retroactively from 2022, will impact both domestic and international companies, meaning American giants Amazon, Google, Meta, Airbnb and Uber will have to start payments from Monday.

        Source

            • @[email protected]
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              10 days ago

              Yes and no. Companies will always try to pass expenses like tax onto their customers. My guess is they will increase rates on customers significantly to recover some of those unexpected retroactive costs in the near term with the side effect of increasing revenue above the 3% tax in the long term.

              • @[email protected]
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                410 days ago

                It is a corporation tax, not the sales tax.

                They are using the turnover to estimate tax liability because taxing profits achieved in a single country by digital multinationals is bordering on impossible (and too easy to avoid).

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                  310 days ago

                  Yup. Companies avoid paying taxes in one country by getting their divisions in other, lower tax countries to charge the one in the high tax country so much for intellectual property and branding etc that they make a loss in the high tax country, which in some countries entitles them to a tax rebate. It’s insane.

                  • @[email protected]
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                    310 days ago

                    Which is why most of the multinationals should be taxed on turnover in a country taxing them.