France is looking into a plan that would see a new tax introduced on smartphones, tablets and some other gadgets in order to raise money to fund French art, films and music.
According to an article at the Financial Times, such initiative was mentioned in a government-commissioned report to determine how the country should adapt to continue its commitment to French-language culture in the digital era.
Apparently, the tax of 1% per device sold would raise as much as 86 million EUR with the idea to eventually further increase the tax to 4%.
Culture minister Aurélie Filippetti said the tax could be included in the country’s 2014 budget as part of the government’s plan to “correct excessive imbalances” in the digital economy and “to make actors that don’t directly exploit content, but which profit from its circulation, contribute to its creation”.
Unsurprisingly, DigitalEurope — a Brussels-based lobbying group for smartphone makers — dislikes the idea, calling it “a move in the wrong direction.”
Personally I’ve nothing against using tax payers money to fund culture. The problem, however, is pinpointing a single industry to bear the cost of such efforts. In that sense, I wonder whether the French government would commit any resources to this idea if let’s say Nokia or Samsung are headquartered in Paris. I doubt that would be the case…