Pop tax coming to British Columbia April 1
Posted March 5, 2021 2:48 pm.
Last Updated March 5, 2021 2:51 pm.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – If you buy soft drinks at a B.C. restaurant or shop next month, you’ll be dinged provincial sales tax.
Food is generally exempt from PST, but starting April 1, soda will be taxed at a rate of seven per cent.
The change will cost a few cents per can, cup or bottle of pop, but Muriel Protzer with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business says there will be administrative costs for business owners.
“You have to completely re-program that point-of-sale terminal to make sure that you are reflecting this PST change. There is a lot of work that goes into the back end of being able to adapt to something like this. And that, of course, takes time,” Muriel Protzer with the Canadian Federation of Independent Business said, noting many businesses will need to provide additional training for staff.
Protzer says small businesses are already dealing with challenges linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Now is simply not an appropriate time to be implementing changes that have administrative cost implications or could be affecting consumer demand,” she argued.
This shift was scheduled to kick in earlier, but the province pushed it back because of the pandemic.
