Still with us
The Goods and Services Tax is not gone, as had been promised by the Liberals in the last election campaign. This must cause some chortles from the ghost of Brian Mulroney.
Actually, what ChrŽtien and Company had in mind was giving the tax a new suit of clothes, calling it a sales tax instead of GST and burying it in the price of goods and services.
This would put the blame for high prices back on the manufacturers and retailers rather than the government.
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However, finance minister Paul Martin is forced to admit the only practical amendment of the GST is to harmonize it, and the provinces from Ontario west refuse to sing that song.
When the Mulroney government was giving birth to the GST, it expended a good deal of tax money to encourage installation of special cash registers in businesses across the country.
These listed the sales taxes and governments were electronically notified of the windfall that came their way each time you bought a part for an air seeder.
I bought a television set the other day and the invoice told a remarkable story of sale prices nearly offset by GST and PST.
Certainly, if the GST was hidden this would constitute a great reduction in Canadian content in our commercial literature. Our Canadian cultural organizations may want to pursue that.
Then there is the loss of efficiency resulting because cash-register capacity would be under-used.
These cash registers are a vast improvement for small retailers on shoe boxes and abacuses, and clerks are only now getting comfortable with computerized cash handling.
Perhaps we should have a commission look into the whole GST issue and decide nothing can be done.
