This is exactly what the “Taxation is theft” morons don’t understand. They think if the government no longer takes their cut, everybody will just have X amount of money more, and the market won’t just swallow that up without giving you a single thing in return.
companies will 100% of the time do anything even illegal things to make more money.
that's the thing that pisses me off: the tax often increases the perception of how much people are willing to spend. even if you remove or decrease the tax, the companies just inflate the price to fatten their margins. Rule #1 of capitalism: the consumer always loses.
I think the answer here is to buy that somewhere other than WalMart. Are there any stores nearby that didn’t increase their price on the controller?
I am just really glad none of the crap I sell is included. The list and logistics to comply with this "holiday" is insane.
Lets say you run a liquor store:
This is not even opening the other categories (Oh don't even think about child car seat/strollers). The cost of this program on stores and taxpayers (the cost of it is payed by the lack of tax and also the tax collected being diverted to this program) is not worth the 5% off some people will see (since most places will just up the price 5%).
Edit: and as the radio just pointed out this is a tax break on mostly luxury goods so it only really helps the people who don't need the help. (the example given was a dinner party would be 5% cheaper but a single parent's heat is not).
It would cost thousands in labor to set up temporary tax rates based on alcohol content. Most systems have tax rates which apply to product categories, not alcohol content. Liquor store pos systems in the US, at least in my state, typically don’t even store the abv in the price book, which would make this taxation virtually impossible to comply with.
Yeap, this is Canada where stuff like this is rolled out in a month or so and businesses are just told to comply.
(Oh and those examples are from the Canada.ca official list not hyperbole)
Edit: it also comes with a friendly threat!
"Make a reasonable effort to comply
Businesses who make reasonable efforts to comply with the legislation will not be the focus of our compliance actions.
We will be focusing on situations where businesses willfully and egregiously refuse to comply with the temporary measures, such as a business that collects the GST/HST and does not remit it to the CRA."
Crazy, they’re basically saying, ‘we know this is impossible so just do your best, as long as you remit everything you collect then it doesn’t really matter what/how you collect’.
This is very unfair to the small business because inevitably there will be some customers who will be pissed off when the store doesn’t collect properly, and small business won’t even come close to doing it correctly.
Making temporary short term massive changes to taxation is a very dumb idea. Canada must be drinking uncle Sam’s koolaid to be acting this foolish.
Most people don't even care and did not know this even started, its just another failed attempt of the current government to gain support.
This one is extra silly, but the silver lining is that it has got people of drastically different political viewpoints something to agree on. You could have a talk show with the most rabid pundits from opposite sides discuss this and the only arguments would be what the worst part of this plan is.
There is also another component to this as well, everyone is supposed to get $250 in the mail (or direct deposit). And that's also just bad tax policy that has been made fun of in the past. On top of that they have not managed to actually pass legislation or even figured out how to do this at this point. Oh and the post office is still on strike.
Is that legal? (Am American - idk about Canadian legal strictures around that, but it definitely feels like it’d run afoul of some sort of consumer protection legislation or something like that)
Kroger (grocery store) is doing the same thing this week. They're doing a 20% off "holiday bonus" discount on a one per-customer basis (20% off your entire order). The catch? Every item in the store is at least 20% more expensive than it was last week.
dont expect it to go back down
Time to introduce the "lowest price from the last 30 days" requirement like in Europe.
Can you explain this? Never heard of it.
EU for online purchases mandates that the lowest price from the last 30 days be displayed alongside the actual price and discount. So they can't pull the "make the price higher and discount to a higher price than it used to be" trick, best they can do is make price higher and discount it to what it has always been. Which is pointless to them because they'll just get less sales in the month before. Also a month is enough time for the loss of sales to be significant that it isn't worth it to keep the price high to create a "bargain".
I would support Canadian Tire over Walmart.
The time that product spends on the shelves of a Canadian Tire is just a layover before its permanent move to a landfill. They are Coors quality at Heineken prices.
I bought a Husqvarna chainsaw from Canadian tire and it was garbage. I thought I was getting the same one my buddy got (he got his at the local kubota). Turns out Husqvarna just licenses out their name for the right price. It was a garbage chainsaw with orange plastic and the sticker was even upside down.
See, trickle down economics works ladies and gents /s
Fuck this is gold.
Well, unless people realise the actual worth of gold... But until then.
How would trickle down work with gold? I’m picturing some kind of golden shower?
Seems like an opportunity to use this in attack PP's tax-cut rhetoric, and to attack the oft-repeated talking points from business that tax increases will be passed on to consumers.
Tax cuts are eaten by businesses, so long as the businesses believe that people will continue to buy. Tax increases will also be eaten by businesses, so long as the businesses believe that people will refuse to buy at a higher price. It's all being taken by or from shareholders.
It's a shame no political entities will actually touch this with anything more pointed or useful than "that's appalling!"
Reminds me when Alberta reduced the tax on gas, and within a few weeks consumers were paying the same amount again
Ontario did this too. Took a few weeks tops, and now we pay the same as we always have, except none of the money goes to our roads, just to big oil.
Thanks Ford.
I laugh because he keeps extending it too and I sure and shit bet he will extend it again so the next government to come in has a poison pill in killing his gas rebate effectively raising the price of gas drastically overnight.
This is 100% intentional by the OPC. Bunch of fuckwits.
His supporters say it’s because Trudeau has too much tax on gas
His supporters don't ever shut up, despite how uninformed they tend to be.
In any reasonable country, that should be illegal. In many places it is
In Italy when the government reduced vat on ebooks from 22% to 4% not a single publisher passed the savings to the customer and they even increased the prices
the prices probably won't go back down in february, either.
Prices go up and stay up.
Tax credits are always a government gift to corporations.
Well the debate should be over whether the taxes cause things to be expensive or it's corporate greed causing things to be expensive.
Next time you see one of the ubiquitous Poilievre ads claiming it's taxes that's making things unaffordable, think about where the problems actually are.
Might be betraying my age here, but do you remember when GST was 7%? EXACTLY the same thing happened.
GST breaks strictly pad the revenues of business AT THE COST of funds to the public purse. Does a fat fucking zero to the wallets of consumers.
I don't say any of this to say that I think what Walmart is doing here is ethical, onky to say that it is logical from their standpoint if they assume there won't be any blowback.
Companies charge what they think they can get for a product. The tax is part of the price. If they think an item will sell for $5.26 including tax, it is reasonable for them to think it will still sell for $5.26 if the item isn't taxed.
That isn't to say this is nice on their part, but the current system doesn't incentivise them to be nice. It incentivises profit.
It does seem like they took the easy route to gain more profit. It is likely that, in the a absence of tax, their profit would be maximized by a price that is somewhere between the old pre-tax price and the old post-tax price.
Yeah, I shouldn't have been surprised. This is normal psychopathic behaviour for a corporation.
You didn't happen to take screenshots did you? It's something that should be reported to the media as well
All prices are set based on what consumers are willing to pay.
The only way prices ever go down is by exercising a decision not to buy something or to go somewhere for an item.
It will not come from the government, unless the government mandates a specific rate.
That's probably illegal.
It has been ruled illegal in the Netherlands only last year but companies still do it and het away with it.
It was so hastily-implemented that I think it's either an oversight or by design.
It is in the US.
The FTC's Guides Against Deceptive Pricing generally require that a seller offer an item at a price for a reasonable, substantial period of time in good faith, and in the regular course of business, before advertising that price as the former or regular price (16 C.F.R. § 233.1). The FTC considers it deceptive to offer an item for sale at a higher price for a short period of time in order to support a claim that an item is discounted when the price is then lowered. This practice is prohibited.
Additionally, most states have consumer protection statutes that prohibit sellers from making false or misleading statements of fact concerning the reasons for, existence of, or amount of a price reduction (for example, Cal. Civ. Code § 1770(a)(13)). Several states also expressly regulate the length of time an item must be offered at a regular price and amount of time it is on sale (for more information, see Practice Notes, Promotional Pricing: Specific State Laws and "Up To" Discounting Law and Practice: Promotional Pricing: State-by-State Requirements).
From here
tell that to amazon and every other retailer that jacks prices up the week or so before a 'sale'
For Amazon, I use camelcamelcamel to see price history. Personally I’ve not seen price increases just for holiday sales but I also don’t buy a lot of stuff on these sorts of days, I just set a price alert and wait for the email.
Sites like these are why amazon has been using more coupons at check out instead of straight discounts. Messes with the price tracking
Guess they're using the "black Friday" technique to lure in shoppers, again!
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