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Originally Posted by Soundy
It's NOT just big corps, though - I work for a small company (just me, another tech, the boss, and the boss's wife who does the books) and they LOVE the HST. Not only does it save them money, but it makes her life doing the accounting a TON easier. It's not just that it's HALF the paperwork; the PST paperwork itself was hideous, and now that's gone.
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So has your company decreased pricing to clients as a result of the cost savings from HST? If it makes the accountant/book-keepers job way easier, one could argue that their wages should also be decreased or at least the business' cost allocated to this task should be decreased... it doesn't make sense to pay somebody the same or more, to do half the work does it?
Like the above poster, and I'm sure many others, I am skeptical that the cost savings realized by businesses will be passed on to consumers in a reasonable amount of time, and in a way that will offset the increased cost to the consumer in a way that is easy to see.
ie. restaurants: I shouldn't be expected to tip 15-20% any more now because I am paying an extra 7% on my food bill due to HST, which is in turn helping the restaurant save money and time at the operational level, which allows the restaurant to pay the servers and waiters more than minimum wage as a result so now my tip can be 5-10% instead. Does it work like this? Obviously no, but why shouldn't it?
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The other thing people overlook in their short-sighted, self-centered haste is that if it's good for business, it allows business to hire more people, or to pay their people higher wages. Someone complaining about the HST because he's unemployed needs to look a little more big-picture and realize this improves his chances of GETTING a job (assuming he's actually looking).
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The problem I see with this view is that it's TOO big-pictured, the polar opposite of the short-sighted self-centered haste. If businesses save money, you are assuming that they are going to WANT to hire more peope, or WANT to pay their existing staff higher wages. What if they don't? Then all of a sudden many of the benefits of HST to this greater good of the economy no longer exists.
Personally, I am less than impressed with how I have to pay more to eat out mainly... it is a luxury and we are now eating out less as a result of it. We can afford to if we wanted to, but we choose not to more often now. Aside from that, and what I posted below, HST has not really impacted my lifestyle in a significant manner.
"Another advantage of going to HST is that tax will no longer be payable on most used goods purchased privately. However, used vehicles, aircraft and boats purchased privately (not from an HST registrant) would still be subject to provincial sales tax, which is being increased from 7% to 12%. If an HST registrant purchases a used vehicle privately, the 12% PST paid on the transfer of the vehicle is not recoverable as an input tax credit."
HST also screwed me when buying a private pre-owned car. The tagline back then was that HST would not apply to anything that GST was not applied to, so used cars should be completely tax free now... except used car dealerships would now be at a significant disadvantage and the province would lose a significant chunk of "free money", so instead of paying only 7% PST on private sale used cars we have to pay 12% PST now, extra $1000 out of my pocket. Having to pay sales tax on privately bought items that have already been taxed by the original consumer is a big enough crock on its own, this INCREASE in PST only rubs salt into the wounds and reeks of a cash grab. I don't care if its called PST/HST/whatever, all I know is I had to pay an extra 5% for no good reason other than a pure cash grab.
I would not mind HST at all if all of the previous equivalent GST and PST exemptions applied the same way; all of the cost savings to business and government would still be seen equally but I'm sure then that the government will not get their share of the $ (see example above) and this is the major reason why I am opposed to it.