Business owners in New Westminster are welcoming the return of the provincial sales tax, hoping lower taxes will encourage customer spending.
Alex Bakst owns Atelier Endeavour on Clarkson Street. His tailor shop has been open for more than 10 years and he said that while the HST was in effect, he noticed a drop in the number of requests for custom-made garments.
"When you go to a tailor to make (a) garment for yourself, that would be exempt from provincial sales tax. The fabric is exempt, the thread is exempt, everything is exempt, so really all the special occasion garments were more expensive when the HST came in," he said.
With HST, customers were more likely to purchase specially-made clothing overseas in countries like China, where tailors could offer similar garments for cheaper prices, Bakst said.
But with the return of the PST comes the return of the garment exemptions, and Bakst said he is confident tailors across the province will be able to compete with China.
"We welcome the change because it was meant to benefit us," he said. "Tailors were kind of put in a position where they (had) to be able to compete with the Chinese and with the HST it was next to impossible."
The switch wasn't hard either, he said.
"The PST was with us for many, many decades, not just years, so we're going back to the familiar way of doing things," he said.
Bakst isn't the only business owner enjoying a smooth transition back to the PST.
Russel Bradley, owner of Press Start - a video game store on 12th Street - said the phase out of the penny was more work than the return to the PST.
"That was more complicated than PST because we had to actually change prices," he said. "I have a system that's easy to switch over to the PST, so it just does it automatically."
Restaurant owners are especially happy with the change, according to a press release from the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association,
Restaurant sales declined dramatically when the HST came into effect, the release stated.
"HST cost B.C.'s foodservices industry a total of $1.5 billion in lost sales," said Mark von Schellwitz, Western Canada's vice-president of the association.
As of April 1, the association expects the province's "restaurant industry will grow a healthy 5.1 per cent in 2013."
