[dangerboysteve]

so, in other words, a 5% tax to the consumer.

[eesmith]

Companies charge as much as they can, not how much it costs to produce plus fixed overhead.

They likely already charge what the market will bear, to maximizing revenue, such that increasing the price lowers revenue. Raising the price by 5% as a straight pass-through means lowering total revenue. Depending on the elasticity, the consumer price change could be 0 (assuming no one will pay for a higher price), but is almost certainly less than 5%.

[mike_d]

> Companies charge as much as they can, not how much it costs to produce plus fixed overhead.

Companies will sometimes overtly pass a cost on to the consumer in the hopes of creating political pressure against that cost. For example take a look at your phone or cable bill and how they itemize every tax and fee they have to pay and pass along to you.

[votepaunchy]

Yes, in a competitive market, but when the entire industry is hit with a new exogenous expense then this is much more likely to be passed on to customers.

[alangibson]

This is a myth. Pricing is not deterministic like that. There are many reasons that a company may choose not to raise prices when it's costs go up.

[bequanna]

I’d like to see a solid, peer reviewed study that states: in a normal, competitive market, business cost increases are not correlated with consumer price increases.

[saaaaaam]

When a similar (though lower) streaming levy was implemented in France, Spotify passed it onto consumers.

[exe34]

Plus they're going to raise the price whenever they think they can get away with it anyway.

[JackSlateur]

Yes, a myth

Just like VAT increases are not quickly followed by price increases

A myth.

[bryanlarsen]

This isn't a tax, it's a requirement that 5% must be spent on Canadian content. So unless they aren't already spending at least 5% on content then it might affect the mix of content they have available but it shouldn't affect their costs.

[jpl56]

In that case, they just need to create a Canadian company and create AI-generated programs...