Canada to Tax Music Downloads

The Copyright Board of Canada has approved new taxes onto downloaded MP3 music files. These tariffs will be charged to iTunes and other companies that provide legal music downloads.

Single tracks will be taxed 2.1 cents per track and entire albums will be taxed at 1.5 cents for each track in the album. The taxes will be given to SOCAN the Society of Composers, Authors, and Music Publishers of Canada which will redistribute the money to its members.

Canada has already added 21 cents to the price of every blank CD sold in Canada by reasoning that blank CDs are used to store copyrighted material.


The new tariff is retroactive to 1996, when Canada's music industry began their campaign to tax on transmitted music files.

The Copyright Board has yet to release a decision on Internet Radio or the use of music on a personal or business website.

For limited downloads (Songs that are only useable for a preset period of time), stores will pay 5.7 percent of the amount paid by subscribers, with a minimum of 54.8 cents per subscriber per month.

Online services which provide on demand streams will be required to pay 6.8 percent of the amounts paid by subscribers or a minimum of 43.3 cents a month per subscriber.