I love a good gimmick. I like saving money or getting some. But Chrystia Freeland referred to Trudeau’s GST/HST break as “costly political gimmicks that we can ill afford.” So, I went out on the Midtown to see if Trudeau’s political gimmick was working.
I went shopping for a birthday gift at Playful Minds toy store on St. Clair West. I asked the lady who works there if Trudeau’s HST break was helping the shop. She just looked at me and chuckled.
“It might be helping you, the customer, but it means a lot more work for us.” She said she’s working an extra hour every night together with the owner to process the government’s last-minute, patchwork GST/HST break. Trudeau’s temporary tax break only applies to 12 item types.
I bought a Minecraft Lego set, a toy that does meet the government’s list of eligible items that “Involve building, creating or assembling structures, objects or models by using pieces, parts, materials or modelling compound.”
I also bought a squishy toy for my daughter. The local toy shop now has to manually separate my purchase and process the refund. “It was so last minute,” said the clerk at the shop. “If we would have gotten notice that it was starting on something like Dec.1, we would have had time to prepare.”
They would have been able to provide automatic discounts on eligible items for online purchases, for example. They now have to manually refund the taxes on applicable items.
Trudeau’s gimmick isn’t increasing the number of shoppers either. The toy shop wasn’t crowded for a Saturday before Christmas. Just two other customers were in there, even though a quarter of Trudeau’s HST tax breaks are for children’s items.
The toy store wasn’t my only stop. I took out the family for breakfast at Emma’s Country Kitchen also on St.Clair West. We had coffee, a classic breakfast, two eggs benny, and pancakes. The HST break applied because the government list includes “Prepared meals and food, as well as all non-alcoholic beverages.” I didn’t have to pay the HST. About $13.
I also went for the big holiday shop at the LCBO later in the evening: beer, wine, liqueurs and spirits. The HST break applies to beer and wine, but not the rest. I had a savings of $25.
In all our holiday shopping on the weekend, I spent a few hundred and saved less than $50. There were no extra crowds of shoppers clamouring for the HST break. Ironically, the only person who gave it more attention than it was worth was Freeland herself.
