Budget raised tariff on iPods, but may have been a mistake: professor

OTTAWA – A business school professor has discovered that last month’s federal budget contained a five-per-cent increase in the tariff on iPods, as well as tricycles and wigs often used by cancer patients.

But Mike Moffatt also says he thinks the government may have hit iPods by accident, tripped up by the complicated tariff codes.

Moffatt is an assistant professor at the Richard Ivey School of Business who says the tariff increase went unnoticed until he found it.

He says the increase was included in a small budget section that dealt with the general preferential tariff regime for developing countries.

Moffatt’s finding, posted on Twitter, prompted an NDP news release, which scornfully recalled how the Harper government reacted in 2010 against any suggestion of a tax on iPods.

The news release accused the government of cowardice and hypocrisy.