Windsor businesses see little benefit from tax holiday

Now that the tax holiday is over, did any Windsor businesses see an increase in sales? Robert Lothian asks around.

As the two-month tax reprieve on specific items ends, businesses in Windsor are reporting little impact on their bottom line.

At the Whiskeyjack Boutique in Downtown Windsor, much of their inventory fell within the federal government’s list of items to remove the HST/GST.

“I don’t think it made anyone come to shop necessarily. I don’t know if they changed their habits,” shop co-owner Allison Mistakidis told CTV News.

While some of the shop’s items, such as books and snacks, applied to the initiative, Mistakidis said they often had to inform customers about the tax holiday.

“The first few days we had to kind of point it out to people. They didn’t really know,” Mistakidis said.

”So mostly people didn’t really know or pay attention, to be honest.”

The Federal Government implemented the holiday tax break in December to ease the financial burden for consumers and potentially spur more business.

At The Lumberjack Restaurant, co-owner Matthew Hess said their customer levels didn’t rise significantly over the past two months.

“December was good, but it wasn’t anything like more with the tax holiday,” Hess said.

“January was like every other January in the restaurant business, it was very slow.”

Hess, who learned about the tax break from a customer, felt it was poorly advertised, and the guidelines for applicable items proved to be confusing.

Participating businesses made changes to their payment systems to ensure the tax was correctly removed.

“The problem is, we can’t turn it off for one thing and not for another,” Hess noted.

“So we would have to turn off the tax for everything, and then things that were still taxed we would have to add that tax manually back onto the bill.”

Nationally, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business stated the tax break was a “flop” for small businesses.

About 5 per cent of small businesses saw stronger sales compared to the same period last year, according to CFIB data.

Due to the additional headaches for business owners, the CFIB is calling for the CRA to not penalize companies for “good faith errors.”

For Mistakidis, she’s not opposed to another tax holiday in the future, but the store owner believes changes can better serve businesses and customers.

“More categories might be helpful, so if it wasn’t just specific items, I mean, I understand why they would choose certain ones, but maybe a tax break on everything for an extended period of time would make more of a difference for people,” she said.

“Especially when it was right before the holidays, it kind of made it a big headache when it’s the busiest time of the year for especially a little gift shop.”