U.S. streamers press Canada appeals court to stop proposed local-news tax

Major U.S. streaming players are pressing a Canadian court to intervene in Canada's plans to compel them to turn over 5% of their in-country sales to fund local broadcast news.

The Motion Picture Association-Canada -- the trade group representing streamers including Disney (NYSE:DIS), Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), Paramount+ (NASDAQ:PARA) (PARAA), Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:WBD) and Crunchyroll (SONY) -- says the move from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission oversteps its authority and would lead to higher prices for streaming consumers.

“The CRTC’s decision to require global entertainment streaming services to pay for local news is a discriminatory measure that goes far beyond what Parliament intended, exceeds the CRTC’s authority, and contradicts the goal of creating a modern, flexible framework that recognizes the nature of the services global streamers provide,” MPA-Canada President Wendy Noss said.

“Our members’ streaming services do not produce local news nor are they granted the significant legal privileges and protections enjoyed by Canadian broadcasters in exchange for the responsibility to provide local news," she added.

The CRTC's plans targeted payments (of 5% of companies' Canadian revenues) to begin with the Sept. 1 start of the broadcast year, and were expected to bring in about C$200M per year in total.