Local business owners raising a glass to capped excise tax on alcohol products

A pair of Prince George business owners are applauding Ottawa’s decision to cap the excise tax on alcohol products.

The increase is being capped at 2 percent for the next 12 months after it was originally slated to rise 6.3% on Saturday.

Doug Bell, the Owner/Operator of the Northern Lights Estate Winery told MyPGNow.com the issue forced a lot of industry stakeholders to band together and take charge.

“We are in a time now where our costs have never been higher. They are going up substantially every single day and unfortunately, that is getting passed down to the consumer. Any little bit that we can find that is going to reduce the overall impact to total pricing in the liquor industry is a good thing.”

While Bell agrees the industry should be taxed and highly regulated, it got to a point where too much money was going out the door.

“What we think we are paying for is the liquor tax, the GST, the liquor PST when we get to the cash register. But, what’s actually happening is that there is a whole bunch of embedded costs below that, which are profit centres for our government and there is not a ton of reasoning as to why they need to go up every single year.”

Downtown PG President and Local restaurant Owner, Eoin Foley stated a hike tied to high inflation rates would have been devastating.

“These sorts of things really add up a lot. Especially over the last few years, we have seen the government constantly add on, add on and add on with the expenses falling on the shoulders of small businesses – these are the businesses that are the lifeblood of the economy.”

“This repeal of this tax increase or the cap is a recognition by the government stating it wasn’t really fair to basically be taxing higher because inflation is higher.”

Bell and Foley believe it makes logical sense to come up with a tax schedule on increases that are based on a variety of factors that include the consumers.