Montreal is pressuring Quebec to approve a 1% municipal sales tax so that cities can get a piece of the lucrative extra charges tacked onto our purchases, just days after the federal GST got reduced from 6% to 5%.
I hope this isn’t a selective thing, in which some cities will charge different tax rates from others. That would be a recipe for disaster and rampant loophole-exploitation.
Instead, perhaps the provincial government should increase the provincial sales tax by one point, and put that money into something important like health care.
UPDATE (Jan. 8): No dice, Quebec says.
And since people will drive miles out of town to get a pack of cigs on the reservation just to not pay taxes on it. I can see what this is gonna do to local businesses if Montreal has a 1% sales tax that say Laval does not. But then I have full confidence that everyone, the government and citizens will do the right thing.
This was the first story I heard this morning, waking up. I buried my head under the pillow as a result.
Burlington, Vermont, has this sort of tax. Businesses are losing money, because folks simply drive 5 miles down the road and thereby avoid the tax.