A Steady Brook resident whose wife operates a small restaurant in Corner Brook has written an open letter to Premier Andrew Furey and Finance Minister Siobhan Coady questioning the new sugar-sweetened drink tax and what he says is the disproportionate burden put on small businesses to collect and remit the tax.
Jerry George’s wife runs the Pho Vietnam restaurant and says the onus is on her to collect the tax on a single menu item.
That means, charging, collecting, recording, and remitting the tax—all of which require a great deal of record-keeping, time, and effort.
George says his wife’s business uses a very small volume of soft drinks and doesn’t buy them wholesale, which means the tax is being charged twice on the soft drinks she buys.
He says she scours the flyers and buys the drink she needs when it is on sale, which means she pays the tax at the retail level, before charging it a second time to her customers. In order to avoid double taxation, says George, they have to fill out a second form requesting a refund for the tax she paid.
George thinks the tax is “ill-conceived” and if government needed to charge the tax to help address obesity, then they should have charged it on the wholesale level.
Government Response
The Department of Finance has been in contact with George. It says the tax is collected at the wholesale level and retailers do not have to remit the tax directly to the department except when the product was purchased or imported from outside the province.
The Department says in the case outlined by George, the tax does not have to be remitted by the restaurant because it was already purchased and paid on the retail level.
The Department of Finance says if retailers or wholesalers have questions, or if someone has paid the tax when they don’t think they should have, they are welcome to contact tax administration at 729-6297.