True enough;and your distributors will scream bloddy murder if they caught in the ultimate squeeze as they will.
Just remember also that when you all get excited by Harpoon's 1% drop in GST. We consumers will never see one cent of that drop. If it was a direct tax reduction to payroll taxes it would have gone into our pockets. Cheap politics at play there.

I don't believe that will happen very much. It is the one redeeming feature of a value added tax. The tax is visible and comes on after the comparision shopping has been done. It is much better than those who wanted the GST rolled into the displayed price of goods.

For the same reason, it is better to pay cash at the airport for all of these AIF's than having it rolled into the ticket price.

If you are concerned about getting the value for your dollar that is not being passed along, for expensive items, take advantage of free trade. You can buy a new or used car in the US for US prices and no tax, bring it across for a $200 fee and the usual Canadian taxes. In my case, the car was priced in Canada at a 65 cent dollar. So it was a no brainer. I brought it over myself but people I know have used brokers who charge a fee that is minor compared to the saving. Some new car dealer organizations have agreed not to sell cross-border despite the fact that their manufacturer has no problem (check out Toyota as an example). The pressure of free trade will bring things in line pretty fast. The last time the dollars were close, there was no free trade. BTW in the past, the C$ was high because interest rates were higher in Canada. Now they are lower, so the dollar is strong based on fundamental value, not artificial propping. Remember when the government bought US currency from its reserves to keep the value of the dollar high? Is it selling of C$s now?

there's no way they can enforce trans-border sales. not only can someone set up an address in the US, such a policy defies common sense: change the makrup on canadian goods (and the higher costs to sell these goods in hand), don't try to stop consumers from doing something they're set on.

BTW, this thread title is really funny in hindsight.

Tell us that your next movie ticket will be reduced by about 10 cents next time you go to the theater. Also, sellers of resale goods/services will absorb the 1% reduction as profit when they pass it through.
Good experienced governments know full well that businesses will simply take additional profit when they are middle men in tax reductions. Most economists have gone on record as opposing this form of tax reduction as well, and Harpoon is an economist, so he knows he is buying us with our own money of which we'll actually very little. Cheap politics is what we're getting...not cash.

The pressure from my retailers is mounting and it should only be a matter of time. Every time my customers ask me why the prices aren't dropping I tell them to phone the distributor as we sell them in US $ and the exchange has nothing to do with us. Gets me off the hook pretty fast and they appreciate our company isn't trying to make extra off them.

And funny, that's how all the "tax reductions" announced in the budget works!

At the end of the day, nothing changes for the government in terms of revenues and businesses get more money and Canadians feel they get a good deal but really are not at all.

Personally, it has hurt me since I still have sizable chunks of USD earned when it was $1.60, 1.50 and 1.35 and 1.25.

But I really think the high CAD is hurting manufacturing, especially the ones that exports. They cannot get more money since they sell in USD, etc but a lot of their costs are in CAD so they are being squeezed. If this continues, expect to see more of the small to medium sized business to go under and some multi-nationals still producing in Canada to pull out and import instead and just leave Canadian operation a marketing company.

So nearly 4 years later and with the exchange rate within 2% of parity (1/3 to 1/2 appreciation depending on how you measure it), timely to bring up this topic again?

It is relevant in that reward conversion levels (for instance AMEX Canada Membership Rewards - see this thread) have not been adjusted to reflect the near-parity of the dollar.

From the Bank of Canada, and inverting their data from CAD/USD to USD/CAD:

• lowest close was on 18 Jan 2002 at $1.00 CAD = $0.6202 USD
• highest close was on 20 Aug 1957 at $1.00 CAD = $1.0613 USD

GJS - yow

Overnight it was at $1CDN=$0.991US at least. Less than 1% of parity now

I know, but it slipped back.

I won't be surprised until it hits $1.10, but this is great news for all who love to travel.

If you deposit a $1000 US cheque into a Canadian account today, you will get less than par. Time to get rid of all my US Dollars.