Canadian govt to cloud providers: Want our business? Stay local, eh The government of Canada has laid out a cloud computing strategy that could bring more data center facilities to the Great White North. The administration's Cloud Adoption Strategy calls for a provision that all sensitive government information be housed within the country. "Departments and agencies will follow a 'Right Cloud …
Ole Juul wants Canada data centers to pay the same taxes as the USA...
Corporate Tax Rates
Canada = 15% - 26% federal + 11-16% provincial
USA = 35% + 0-12% State/Local
Clearly, Canada offers typically lower Corporate Taxes than the USA. The USA's tax rate is clearly amongst the highest on Earth, Cameroon's 38.5% rate is the ONLY Federal rate that actually exceeds the 35% rate in the USA.
Ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates
If you don't trust Wiki, then follow the References that it provides.
Acknowledge in advance that businesses pay other taxes, fees and expenses, more complex than just corporate income tax.
TLDR: The tax rates that you quote for Canada are dishonest and inaccurate.
Canada has additional tax burdens that never appear in such napkin calculations because they are disguised as mandatory service fees or are otherwise intentionally hidden. (eg: Fuel prices double when you cross the border from New York to Ontario, where it is effectively illegal to break out taxes as separate line items on fuel receipts. The provincial legislature made it illegal to break out the new carbon tax on electricity bills just this week.)
Regulatory capture, official graft, and payroll overheads are rampant problems for small businesses. Canada has nothing comparable to the American S-Corp or "at will" employer protections, and bureaucrats unapologetically pick winners through affirmative action programs. Americans at least pretend that their affirmative action programs are fair or compensatory.
Pertinent to the story, infrastructure providers like Bell Canada make AT&T seem inexpensive and competent. Front Street is pretty much the only data center on the east side of the country that is open to the public and that would be recognized by foreigners as enterprise class.
PushF12 clearly has his facts wrong: "Fuel prices double when you cross the border from New York to Ontario"
Gasoline (petrol) prices in NY State vary widely, $2.30 average, but seem to be as low as US$2.17 per US gallon in Buffalo, NY. $2.22 at Sams Club Niagara Falls, NY.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada is $0.909 per liter. That's equal to US$2.61 per US gallon. Far too many dingbats can't do the math correctly in the double conversion (dollars, volume), remembering to consider the smaller US gallon.
$2.61 compared to even $2.17 (being generous, state average is $2.30) is NOT "double". +20% is not "double". You can't even cherry pick gasoline prices to find a 'double'.
Clearly you've got your head filled with incorrect 'facts' and you're thus totally confused.
This is very common with right wingers: bad data in, bad processing in the middle, raving nonsense output.
A good number of those who live south of the border seem to get in funk when presented with anything NOT in feet, lbs, Gallons (US), Pint(US), Farenheit, time (AM/PM) and the odd way of presenting dates
Those silly metric units are not for them. Foreign rubbish (as stated to me last June about 10km from the US/CDN border in Washington State)
Ontario "the new carbon tax on electricity bills "
Electricity Generated in Ontario as of Aug 07 2016 08:45 (snapshot)
Generation Totals
NUCLEAR 10870MW 72.6%
HYDRO 2742MW 18.3%
GAS 773MW 5.2%
WIND 533MW, BIOFUEL 35MW, SOLAR 28MW
Natural Gas seems to be 3GW on average (4x the snapshot, so 20%). But that's THE ONLY electricity source used in Ontario that has any direct carbon footprint. And natural gas is one-half coal's CO2. The vast majority (80%+) of Ontario's electricity is already 'carbon free'.
Carbon Taxes - this one is a miss. Dumb, dumb, dumb, stupid, dumb...
https://www.cns-snc.ca/media/ontarioelectricity/ontarioelectricity.html
PushF12 offers "...infrastructure providers like Bell Canada make AT&T seem inexpensive and competent."
Our Bell Canada 'Fibe' FTTH is working great.
Their backhaul network seems to be first rate, don't see any issues in use. They obviously know what they're doing,and clearly haven't cut any corners. It just works.
Up to Gb if we needed it. We don't. They've bumped up our speed on their own.
Taking exchange rates into account, it's priced reasonably. Not cheap, but acceptable value.
To their credit, they *actually* made the investment to roll it out. Bless them. I actually hope that they make a profit, to encourage them to roll out FTTH to others. Seriously, I'll pay a slightly higher price to benefit others in the long run. Their profit = more FTTH for others = the greater good.
There's actually very little to complain about, compared to the US ISPs I've read about. So I disagree on the point you made, as quoted.
YMMV, ...sorry if you've had bad luck.
Way to thread-jack, eh.
While the 'official' corporate (Fed/Prov) tax rates you mention are, a first glance higher in the USA, first question: Why compare Canadian Fed and Prov. taxes against US State/Local taxes? Are there no federal corporate taxes in the USA?
Secondly: What's critical to consider is THE ACTUAL TAXES PAID by corporations in the USA.
Quoting from "CORPORATE INCOME TAX Effective Tax Rates Can Differ Significantly from the Statutory Rate" by the GAO's report to Congress:
"For tax year 2010, profitable Schedule M-3 filers actually paid U.S. federal income taxes amounting to 12.6 percent of the worldwide income that they reported in their financial statements (for those entities included in their tax returns). This tax rate is slightly lower than the 13.1 percent rate based on the current federal tax expenses that they reported in those financial statements; it is significantly lower than the 21 percent effective rate based on actual taxes and taxable income, which itself is well below the top statutory rate of 35 percent.". [Emphasis mine]
http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/654957.pdf
(This report is from 2013, it should still be approximately true.)
In any case, since thread-jacking is a thing: Stop Funding Wars all Over the Planet! You'll same a lot in taxes, FFS.
Returning to the article at hand, however: Privacy laws in Canada are substantially stronger than those in many other countries. There's no frickin' way Canadian Government information should be stored outside of Canada.
Duh. Of course US companies have high, unreasonably so, tax rates. In practice though, the actual tax payout is highly variable w all the loopholes. US govt should figure out how much/little it wants to tax corporations and set a sane simple tax system with as few loopholes as possible around a simple base rate. Then... drumroll... make them pay it.
Of course, with a huge industry of tax accountants, lobbyists and strident lefties defending the rarely-applied-nominal rate, the likelihood of that happening is the same as Kim Jong-Un dropping 20kg and not being bat shit crazy.
Still doesn't make your post any more intelligent though.
Reality is more complex, with higher Canadian taxes partially offset by not having to pony up as much health coverage.
Winter, yes. Summer, not so much. It can be +40°C in an inland city like Ottawa (...got the T-shirt) in summer. And be above +30°C all day and all night, even in the wee hours. Those expecting constant winter will be disappointed.
If you're needing more moderate temperature range (rarely above +30°C) then head to the coast. Affordable power, excellent fiber optic networks, cheap land, skilled labour, excellent lifestyle. Look towards the east coast of Canada. Perhaps somewhere in the vicinity of Halifax, NS.
is a remake of "Strange Brew", only this time set in a data centre.
Canada is not the first country to issue such rules. The EU and China are among those that require cloud services to house their servers locally, and the US runs much of its cloud services on a custom-built AWS cloud center whose exactly location within the states has not been formally released.
I expect that the UK, once free of the shackles of EU bureaucracy and heavy-handed oppression, will turn triumphantly to the free market and soon be locating all its government data in China.
The "Cloud", translated into Honest English means: Store your data on Our Server so we can browse it at our leisure and you won't even Know where the server IS. And sometimes, we won't be able to find it Either.
I have Never understood why anyone would want to store their data, particularly Sensitive data, on a Hard Drive that belongs to someone Else. And certainly not why they would pay the cost of a new hard drive every few months instead of just buying your Own and saving lots of Money.
Heck, the way the cost of storage has Plummeted over the last few years, I've got at least a Terabyte of Unused space on my own drives that I may Never fill up.
Why would anyone store their data on someone else's server?
Improved security (a modern data centre is far more secure than a typical server room).
Lower costs due to economies of scale
Greater reliability (does your office have N+1 redundancy, 24/7 support and ample provision of hot standby equipment?)
The GTA has had at least 12 "to hot" health warnings this year. And the rest of this week is in that band as well. Humidity is utterly ridiculous right now.
We have rather a lot of tiered data centres in Canada, the *vast* majority of them are private. Yes, Front street is large, well managed and well known, but there are some *very* good not so well known DCs out there. Most of *those* are somewhat smaller. Major issue with a top tier DC here (in Ontario at least) is getting the third grid feed. Most areas you can get two grids easy - but that third one is gonna cost an arm and a leg. *cough* something about infrastructure costs.
At least today, here in the GTA, there ain't a cloud in the sky and the temps and UV index are soaring. 'scuze me while I butter the youngest up with SPF 45 before he jumps in the pool. (Yes I'm WFH today)
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