Google Tax: France considers promoting culture by taxing search engines outside of France

Video killed the radio star and the Internet killed print news. But not necessarily. The French may have an answer to Canada’s print media’s revenue woes. While CRTC regulations about ownership in Canada continue to be challenged by media conglomerates alleging they cannot compete, the government of France is proposing a new tax, a public sector approach, to regain lost revenue through the internet: taxing add sales on websites based outside of France. While the French model is meant to subsidize the lost revenues of their artists due to Internet piracy and copyright infringement, this approach could surely be applied to Canada’s print media woes by providing a much needed revenue stream.