With the federal government preparing to remove GST on some items ahead of Christmas, businesses are preparing and figuring out how their businesses might be affected.
The GST Tax Relief will encompass a number of items, ranging from children's clothes, books, alcohol, and more from December 14 to February 15, 2025.
Merissa Scarlett, the Executive Director of the Estevan Chamber of Commerce, has been taking a close look at the policy to help businesses understand what it means for their livelihoods.
"For a larger business, they might be easily able to adapt, but I know that it's concerning and that's a lot of work or strain on small business. They may not be aware that it might happen and are they going to get penalized? How do you go into your system and change all these things for these very narrow scope of items and then just the tight timeline? It's the holiday season. So a lot of our small businesses are gearing up. This is their busy time and now they have to deal with some accounting that they may not be prepared for."
For many small businesses, their stock was bought well in advance of the December 15 start date, which means that they have inventory that was paid fr with GST but may not get GST back, further straining their bookkeeping.
With the holiday season already so busy for business owners, Scarlett feels as though the uncertainty is a burden on business owners.
"So I know that our members are getting ready to welcome people shopping, but I know that a lot of them are just kind of waiting and seeing. So I know it's not really set in stone yet. I know for us at the Chamber, I'm actually waiting to hear about the logistics so that I can hopefully provide support to our members and other businesses in town. So they can navigate this system and how it's all going to work."
While Scarlett is somewhat happy to see the federal government responding to affordability woes, there are still too many questions around the policy to say whether it's a good move.
"It's good that the government is reacting. The federal government is recognizing that affordability is hard right now for a lot of Canadians. But I mean, like, it's such a temporary relief and we would like to see some long-term measures in place to improve affordability and we're just kind of worried about that price tag."
"It's going to cost $1.6 billion. So we're going to pay for it eventually. So is it that we're not paying for it right now and then we're going to be paying for it later? Well, it's good to see they're recognizing affordability. It's like, is this the actual relief and way to do it?"