[jt2190]

Agree. I lived in Toronto when the Canadian Government introduced the Goods and Services Tax (GST) as a replacement for the old Manufacturer's Sales Tax (MST) of 13% on all products manufactured in the country, as this hurt the international competitiveness of manufacturers.

The proposal was to replace all provincial sales taxes with the GST, and to apply GST to everything, to keep it super-simple to implement. Well the provinces hated the idea, and the tinkerers just had to have exemptions added for various reasons. The result was that there were two sales taxes in Ontario, each with a complex set of exemptions. The popular example was that buying five donuts was taxable, because that was "dining", but buying six was exempt, because that was "groceries".

[stan_rogers]

The MST wasn't just on products manufactured in the country and didn't have much to do with either international or domestic competitiveness; moving to the GST merely lowered taxes on luxury goods at the expense of raising them on what would be considered necessaries in contract law. By waiting a month to buy the (all foreign-made components) stereo God would have had if he could afford it (I had the audiophile bug bad back then) until the system transitioned, I saved over $5000. Meanwhile, folks buying cheap, basic clothing, cleaning supplies, toilet paper and low-end fast food (all of which were exempt from the MST) were making up the difference.