If I recall properly we were supposed to receive some type of tax break in July. 1% off sales tax, if I am not mistaken.
The problem that I am having with the supposed tax cut is that I can’t find it. Most of the items I buy are purchased at the same time as several others, making it hard to determine exactly how much I have “saved.”
What is interesting about he tax cut is that in the instances when I should notice the tax cut, I have not. This has been observance related particularly to my purchases of coffee and papers, two items that I tend to buy alone, allowing me to be aware of price variations.
It seems to me that before the tax cut my Saturday Globe and Mail cost $2.25, exactly the same as it cost on Saturday past. For a while it went down to $2.24, but now it is back up at its pre-cut price.
At Tim Horton’s it seems that a similar arrangement is taking place. Before the tax cut I was paying $1.70 for my x-large black coffee. Immediately post cut I was paying $1.69. Then a few days ago I think that I was back at $1.70, and now I seem to have jumped all the way to $1.75.
Something about these situations strikes me as off. My impression of what has occurred is that many of the places that sell single items that had prices on the fives were totally annoyed, and possibly their customers were annoyed, with all the pennies they now had to deal with. Even if this is not the case, it seems that something has snuck in and caused prices to rise by a cent in very short order.
I can’t say that I am surprised by any of this. I expected this to occur. How long did one really expect it to take for the prices of these small items to come back up to some nice looking price? The result seems to be that instead of the consumers paying a billion less the retailer will be able to take in a “free” billion by milking the fact that we were willing to pay the old prices and won’t kick up a stink about a few pennies here and there.
The best thing about is all is that I get to watch it happen all over again in a few months when we get our second “tax cut.”
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3 comments:
we're getting another tax cut? what the hell? I thought the first one was stupid.
really, the 1% tax cut isn't going to make a difference in anyones life, and it does make a difference in the amount of money the government has to spend on things like health care.
ugh...
We are going to get 2% off in perfectly useless 1% doses. I really only see business benefitting from this "consumer friendly" tax cut.
If they want a tax cut like this to make a difference it needs to be big, basically the entire thing, so that people will actually notice a difference when they buy their beer and smokes, or whatever else it is people buy these days.
I know from exrperience that small stores that sell inexpensive items like newstands and coffee shops may raise thier prices by 1% to counteract the tax cut. The 1% decrease often means that you may save a penny but end up getting four back in your change. A lot of people rather spend the extra penny than deal with that extra change.
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