Dear Editor:
I presume you ran your 'Businesses Welcome PST" story in your April 3 edition, only because you did not have an edition on April 1. So you found a tailor who is happy that his provincial sales tax-exempt thread is back, and a video store owner who didn't find the changeover that demanding, but did your reporter talk to any risk-taking entrepreneurs who were planning to install $100,000 worth of equipment in a new plant, and in doing so will now have pay $7,000 in taxes, even before producing a single item, making a single sale, or earning a single dollar of profit?
Unfortunately, with the PST, you might have difficulty in finding such local business owners as they will be setting up in Ontario instead.
Did your reporter talk to the widget maker who now has to charge seven per cent PST on the sale of widgets used by the gizmo maker who charges seven per cent PST on gizmos that are used by the gadget maker who embeds all of the accumulated PST into the price of his gadgets that you and I buy - and then has to collect from us an additional seven per cent PST on all of that?
If your reporter had talked to those business owners, your headline would have been significantly different.
Terry Hewitt, New Westminster
