I don’t know how much I agree with this move. The whole point of HST is to lower administrative costs to businesses by having only one single tax, yet many things are exempted anyways. Why are these things exempted? The spot where the consumer if going to feel the impact of this new form of taxation the most is in things that are quite costly as it is, such as gasoline, a necessary commodity for many people. The fact that your morning Mcmuffin will now be $4.52 instead of $4.20…prices of products change worse than this all the time. It’s not like the money that gets collected by this sales tax is getting dumped into a bottomless hole. The idea is to help pull the government out of its deficit and deliver us with better services. How can people complain about the wait-lines of universal heath care, and at the same time try and deny the government the funds to do something about it? What about newspapers? Apparently the removal of the HST from newspapers was a well applauded move that would save jobs and money in that industry. Are people not aware that all they have to do is jump on a computer and read their daily newspaper for free? What about heading down to McDonalds, Chapters or Tim Horton’s and reading their complementary newspapers? That offsets the cost of your slightly more expensive breakfast or coffee right there. Tax on newspapers might create more of a noticeable shift of people choosing to read their paper online instead of purchasing a hard copy, but as the Internet becomes more and more mainstream, that is a shift we should expect to see now anyways.
I think all this concession has done is show a crack in the Liberals defense. As much as they say they aren’t going to budge anymore…well didn’t they already say that before this? This is just going to result in more vigorous lobbying and complaint.
I think coffee, newspapers, and value meals should be affected by HST. The whole idea of HST would be compromised if items were to be exempted.
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