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Comment by ChuckNorris89 | Hacker News Reader

Same in Austria, there's that tax but downloading is illegal so we get worst of both worlds.

Same in France, except that tax is so high it's skewing the EU average and it created a black market of hard drives and DVDs.

Why not just order from e.g. Germany?

Germany also has that tax. Its on everything from printers to usb sticks and dvd drives.

Its especially fucked up since its explicitly to allow for private copies. Instead it is illegal to circumvent copy protection. Those tax schemes are a major rip off and nothing but pandering to powerful lobbies. Its protection money.

Actually people still order it from Germany since the French tax is much higher.

Legally speaking you have to declare imported drives and pay taxes on them.

Is this specific for drives? I thought the whole European single market thing was to prevent taxing of stuff bought inside the single market? (serious question)

They have different pricing depending on the type of storage medium (Phone/USB Drive/Regular HDD)

https://www.copiefrance.fr/images/documents/tarifs_FR_2019_0...

Looking into it, it seems to not be considered a tax as it's not collected by the government, it also states that if you are importing a drive from a country that also collects such a "tax" you should seek to be reimbursed from the exporting country and pay the "tax" to the importing country.

Their FAQ: https://www.copiefrance.fr/fr/ressources/questions-reponses

Thank you for the links, I was not aware that the consumer is legally required to pay the "copyright tax" on EU imported storage media falling under this ruling.

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