Quote:
Originally Posted by Barnes
I would like to see them remove GST for certain goods like they do for food.
Books and other learning materials, computers, energy saving devices would be good examples.
Oh, and beer.
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The issue with that is that it skews the markets - certain items are cheaper for no reason other than arbitrary tax rules.
If you exempt books, do you exempt magazines? Comic books? Graphic novels?
Is a harlequin romance a better way to spend money than a documentary?
The selective application of value added taxes can have weird taxes, and then you can make things really complicated (and expensive to manage) if you try to make rules to correct the issues.
Personally, I would be more in favour of applying the GST to everything with no exceptions then providing some sort of refundable credit to offset the additional expense; just to make it easier for everyone to manage and remove the quirks that exist now (like that if you buy food in a serving for immediate consumption it is charged GST, but packaged in multiples it is groceries with no GST. For example, doughnuts)