Apple fights new iPod tax

Apple is among a group lobbying to postpone a new iPod tax set to take effect in Switzerland on March 1. The new tariff will add the cost of flash- and drive-based music players as well as audio/video recorders with a built-in hard drive; it could increase prices as much as 20 percent on some items, according to swissinfo. The of the new tax follows a 5-year musician trade group lobby effort with Swiss authorities and could generate around SFr2.5 million a year, according to the report. "Swico, whose 400 members include Apple, IBM and Sony, is also unhappy with what it calls "discrimination" between players with flash memory and those with a hard drive. The tax on a four-gigabyte MP3 player with flash memory will be almost SFr19 ($15), while that on a four-gigabyte iPod will be around SFr2. A 400-gigabyte DVD recorder will incur an extra SFr138 charge."

by MacNN Staff