Few businesses ready for return of PST: Chamber
The New Westminster Chamber of Commerce has joined the provincial body in warning small business aren’t prepared for the transition back to a provincial sales tax (PST).
A B.C. chamber survey revealed 63 per cent of 970 businesses surveyed across the province feel they aren’t ready for the PST to return on April 1, 2013. That’s when the harmonized sales tax (HST) instituted in 2010 will stop being assessed at the cash register to be replaced once again by the PST and the federal goods and services tax (GST).
“Our Chamber of Commerce is governed and operated by small business owners,” said New Westminster chamber president Andrew Hopkins in a news release. “Many of us remember the old PST-GST days. The transition in the future may be complicated but we are only a phone call away and we are here to help all businesses in New Westminster.”
B.C. chamber president John Winter said many new businesses have never collected the PST and need to be “brought up to speed so that consumers are not negatively impacted at the cash register come April.”
Business wanting to know more about the transition can check the chamber’s website, www.bcchamber.org/pst_transition.
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