The digital fee came into force on August 1, 2017 and makes consumers pay more for some electronic devices, equipment or supports that are capable of producing, copying or storing a copy of a work protected by intellectual property such as videos. , music files, pictures or books.
Since then, its rates have been maintained, but being an important source of income for management entities, with a total collection of 211.2 million euros since it began operating in mid-2017, now its rates will rise in most of the cases to adjust to the new times.
New digital canon rates arrive
The Government is finalizing the elaboration of a Royal Decree with which it will tax with new rates the so-called “digital canon”, also called “equitable compensation system for private copying”, the tax that since 2017 raises for the user (since 2012 it was paid through the General State Budgets) the price of devices that have internal storage.
The reason for applying it is to compensate for the possible use that is given to the storage of private copies of books, movies, series, discs and all kinds of digital content. It should be remembered that it only gives the right to copy protected works previously legally acquired for private use, but it does not replace the obligation to pay for the purchase or access to protected works.
As sources from The Objective have been able to confirm, these new digital fee rates could arrive as soon as the Council of Ministers tomorrow, Tuesday, February 14, or at the latest by the end of the month. These new digital canon rates will mean an increase in the amount existing until now, depending on the type of device in question and that in mobile phones will triple with an increase of 200%.
Rate Changes
One of the main changes compared to the initial list of 2017 is that it goes from having 104 products to only 40 items. This applies an update to the new times in which you stop paying for some of the storage devices that have fallen into disuse the most in these almost 6 years of existence of the tax, disappearing the payment for using minidisc, USB keys, fax and televisions, for example.
The increase applies to many other products used today. For example, mobile phones go from paying 1.10 euros to 3.25 euros, tablets go from 3.15 to 3.75 euros and some devices have also been added that have hit the surge in popularity and use in this period of time, such as smartwatches or smart watches with a tax of 2.5 euros.
With the new rates, these will be the devices with the highest digital canon, the only ones that will exceed 5 euros in this tax:
- Peripheral hard disk HDD more than 6.01 TB: 6.45 euros
- Peripheral solid state disk SSD more than 1.01 TB: 6.45 euros
- Desktop PC and laptop up to 1 TB: 5.33 euros
- Desktop PC and laptop from 1.01 TB to 6 TB: 5.33 euros
- Desktop PC and laptop more than 6.01 TB: 5.33 euros
- Multifunction reprography equipment up to 39 copies: 5.25 euros
- Multifunction reprography equipment for more than 39 copies: 5.25 euros
- Equipment with integrated disk more than 6.01 TB: 5.00 euros
