‘Not that much of a deal’: Shoppers, businesses lukewarm on GST holiday
Shoppers and businesses across Canada are expressing mixed feelings and showing little enthusiasm as a two-month break from the federal GST took effect on Saturday.
Lori Parker, the owner of an independent toy store in Toronto, said the sales tax holiday could be good for business because it makes shopping cheaper for customers, but the measure means more work for her staff over the holiday season.
“It does give them a break on costs,” she said. “But we knew from the get-go that it would be a lot of work.”
The owner of Treasure Island Toys said her shop sells thousands of items, and it was not easy to figure out what’s covered with the GST break.
“It was very laborious. We spent a lot of time reading and re-reading what was included in the tax break and what was not included,” Parker said.
“The rules … were quite ambiguous, so they were subject to interpretation. We spent a lot of time talking to other retailers and suppliers about how they were interpreting the rules.”
The federal government announced the plan to temporarily waive the five per cent goods and services tax in a bid to help ease affordability concerns during the holiday season. Provinces with a harmonized provincial and federal sales tax will see the full HST waived.
At the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto, Kishore Basu said he was shopping for Christmas gifts for his family members and is not going to change his shopping list due to the GST holiday.
“The GST doesn’t add that much in the end to most of those goods,” he said. “I don’t think it’s significant enough to change spending patterns.”
Some retailers and small businesses are already frustrated and confused by the Trudeau government’s temporary GST/HST break. They say the expected savings for consumers likely won’t lead to enough extra sales to make the added paperwork worth the trouble.
Basu said he doesn’t think the GST break will be helpful for most people.
“I’m sure it will help some Canadians, but I think the marginal benefit versus what’s added to the deficit isn’t worth it,” he said.
“It’s only for two months, and it’s going to come back. It seems to me more like an election ploy than anything else. I think most people see that.”
In Montreal, Patrick Neault, general manager of Raffin Bookstore, said the chain had to shift some staff during the holiday season to make sure the store was compliant.
“We worked kind of hard the last three weeks so that it goes fluidly today, and it’s working fine so far,” he said, adding Ottawa’s GST holiday wasn’t welcome news when first announced.
But Nault said he isn’t certain that the benefits for…
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