Germany Increases Blank Media Tax On Flash Drives By 2338%

If you thought, the United States had some crazy tax laws, try on this one from Germany. Germany has had what's called the blank media tax since the audio cassette was introduced decades ago. The reason for the tax, according to the government, was to compensate music companies for what was assumed to cause a negative impact on the sales of commercial recordings. That blank media tax has stayed in place all these years as blank media changed and now applies to flash drives as well as memory cards for your camera.

If paying a tax to music companies on a memory card for taking pictures wasn't bad enough, German authorities have now massively increased the blank media tax on flash drives. The blank media tax on a flash drive used to be about $.10 per drive reports geek.com. That blank media tax has now been increased to $1.93 for any flash drive up to 4 GB capacity.

Any storage device that's larger than 4 GB is now hit with a $2.42 storage media tax. That works out to 1850% increase for flash drives 4 GB and under and 2338% increase for flash drives greater than 4 GB in capacity. Germany has offered no clear reason for the massive increase other than the claim that the tax is to compensate for private copying. I guess we can assume alleged piracy is the reason for the massive tax increase.

[via Geek.com]