Did you feel the earth move?
So did you feel the earth move?
Well, some people felt the earthquake but I was referring to the more cataclysmic event, the imposition of the Harmonized Sales Tax.
I for one have felt it, and not in ways that I expected.
So far I’ve heard of HST being charged in some situations where it was not required but where the small business was using it as an opportunity to raise prices. Prepared foods under $4 should not be taxed, but a recent slice of pizza cost me 50 cents more after Canada Day than it did before. I was told of a haircutter who raised his prices due to the HST several weeks before the tax became official.
Regarding haircutters, another story was related to me where customers said they would simply get their hair cut less often because of the additional cost. So a haircutter will do much less business while having to absorb the additional cost of HST being applied to their utilities and general cost of doing business. That is not a recipe for success.
Of course Dalton McGuinty promised the HST would bring more employment. While I never believed that whopper, it appears the HST in some service industries might actually reduce jobs as it forces people out of business, like our haircutter whose business is being trimmed.
As for the HST being attached to gasoline, the cost of gas went up for the long Canada Day ‘weekend’ but will never come down, disguising the increase. What irks me the most about the HST as it applies to gasoline is that it comes on top of a 10 cent per litre federal excise tax and a 14.7 cent per litre provincial gas tax that is already applied to the product before you buy it. That means that you and I get to pay tax on tax. It would be far more reasonable to charge HST only on the cost of the product before taxes are applied to it.
Now, I wonder if the agreement that the McGuinty Liberals signed with the federal government making changes to HST very difficult to impose, would allow for that accounting change. Certainly saving 13 per cent tax on 24.7 cents of each litre of gas would represent a considerable saving to the average consumer – about three cents a litre in fact.
-30-