While it's very nice that shopkeepers who sell tangibles will save some money on bookkeeping hours, the reality is that every service professional needed for business or for home will cost seven per cent more. Your bookkeeper, accountant, plumber, veterinarian, electrician, auto mechanic, contractor, real estate broker, investment broker, web designer, graphic artist, architect, chiropractor, musician, painter, entertainer, roofer, structural designer, home inspector, appraiser, landscape architect, truck driver, bridge builder, etc.
My husband and I run a service business. Our fee will be seven per cent higher or we'll have to lower our prices to compensate. We had planned to hire two new employees this year, but held off, because our potential clients' businesses are down. Small businesses here have laid off staff, cut employee hours, closed one day a week to cut costs, and so on.
In this economy, with the impending harmonized sales tax (HST), there is absolutely no way now that I can afford to hire anyone.
Do not dismiss the need for service businesses to compensate for the HST by lowering their prices, so the customer can still afford the "grand total." When a business lowers prices in order to charge more tax, they'll have less income to grow, less to pay employees, less to spend at neighbouring businesses. And at businesses stretched too thin to compensate, the consumer pays.
But HST will be a boon for the underground economy, "How much if I pay cash?"
Prime Minister Stephen Harper cut GST two per cent to get elected, knowing he would cut money to B.C. Then presto HST! And Premier Gordon Campbell says, "Pay me, I'm yours!" That's two per cent less for seven per cent more.
Let's talk about the real cost to businesses and consumers on every service, not just "haircuts and movie tickets."
Sunny Delmer
Granthams
