Bill C-448 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Excise Tax Act (supply of digital content)

This bill was last introduced in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session, which ended in September 2019.

Sponsor

Pierre-Luc Dusseault  NDP

Introduced as a private member’s bill. (These don’t often become law.)

Status

Outside the Order of Precedence (a private member's bill that hasn't yet won the draw that determines which private member's bills can be debated), as of May 14, 2019
(This bill did not become law.)

Summary

This is from the published bill. The Library of Parliament often publishes better independent summaries.

This enactment amends the Excise Tax Act to require any non-resident person who makes a taxable supply of digital content in Canada through a website that is not hosted in Canada to register for the purposes of that Act.

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Excise Tax ActRoutine Proceedings

May 14th, 2019 / 10:05 a.m.
See context

NDP

Pierre-Luc Dusseault NDP Sherbrooke, QC

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-448, An Act to amend the Excise Tax Act (supply of digital content).

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to introduce my bill. Just yesterday, my colleague from Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie and I were in Montreal, where we pledged to introduce a bill to fix a problem with the Excise Tax Act. This is that bill.

Bill C-448 amends the Excise Tax Act to close the loophole that allows Netflix and other digital content distributors not to collect GST even though all other digital content distributors in Canada do. Netflix is the best known of the companies that use this loophole. This bill would also apply to all other foreign digital content distributors that, like Netflix, do not abide by the same tax rules as Canadian companies.

The purpose of the bill is to level the playing field so the same taxation rules apply to everyone. I urge the government to take its cue from this bill and make it its own so we can fix the problem at last.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)