Canada - Tax Campaign by Toronto Brings a Bill From the Mint

David Miller, the mayor of Toronto, wants Canada’s federal government to share some of its national sales tax with cities. But all that his campaign has generated so far is a 47,680 Canadian dollar ($48,972) invoice from the federal mint.

Apparently, the mint not only makes the money in Canada, it owns the intellectual property rights, as well.

Mr. Miller wants the equivalent of one cent from the 6 percent goods and services tax, (or G.S.T. as it is commonly known). To inaugurate the campaign, Toronto began handing out posters, bumper stickers and buttons, most of which bear the slogan, “One Cent of the G.S.T. NOW,” with a photo of a Canadian penny.

In Ottawa, the intellectual property office of the Royal Canadian Mint soon told city officials that they needed permission to use the penny’s image. The invoice followed shortly afterward.

“We were astonished to see such a request,” a spokesman for the city, Kevin Sack, said.

According to Mr. Sack, the mint is requesting 20,000 Canadian dollars for the city’s use of the words “one cent” in an Internet domain name, an e-mail address and an information line telephone number (416-ONE-CENT). The rest of the bill is related to images of the penny in the campaign.

So far, Toronto has refused to pay. The mint acknowledges that it has no trademark rights to the words “one cent.” (Though the musician Curtis Jackson has registered his stage name, 50 Cent, in Canada.) The design of the penny, however, is copyrighted.

Alexandre Reeves, a spokesman for the mint, said that the words “one cent” appear in its payment request because they were among the factors used in calculating the “media value” of the city’s campaign. The city created the campaign with its own employees and did not use paid advertising.

Mr. Reeves said the invoice was based on an estimate of what the campaign might have cost if the city had used an advertising agency and paid to spread its word.

By law, the mint cannot charge some groups that reproduce coin images, including schools and the news organizations. But Mr. Reeves said that nothing else was immune from the mint’s invoices. “We have to protect our property from abuse,” he said. “We have to be consistent.”

Whatever the outcome, it may be the last dispute over images of the humble penny. Last week, the mint released a survey indicating that 63 percent of small shop owners in Canada favored dropping the one-cent coin altogether.