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.
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)
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.
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.
