A customer walks into a BC Liquor store in Vancouver on March 13, 2014.Ben Nelms/The Globe and Mail
The question
My last receipt for wine purchased in British Columbia included an additional 15-per-cent sales tax. This didn't used to be the case. What's going on?
The answer
Sharp eye. True, British Columbia's government liquor stores now add 10-per-cent PST and 5-per-cent GST at the checkout. The markup at the till is in lieu of factoring those taxes into the shelf prices you see.
The change took place April 1, 2015, and while it may seem like a new tax grab, it's not. Retail prices you now see quoted on British Columbia Liquor Distribution Branch's shelves as well as its website and mobile app no longer include sales taxes and thus are lower than before – until you reach the checkout, of course, where the previously built-in taxes are added back to the final purchase.
BCLDB spokeswoman Tarina Palmer stressed to me that collecting tax at the register, where it's applied to the new, lower list price, has no impact on final retail prices. And that's true (though in some cases the final price will vary by a few pennies from what it was in the past). She said it merely brings government-run BC Liquor Stores in line with common retail standards across North America. "As well," she added, "adding tax at the register allows BC Liquor Stores to use a standard retail point-of-sale system, as opposed to a customized system, which has an increased cost."
Nonetheless, the shift has irked some consumers, like you. Another reader suggested to me that this is a "smokescreen" designed to give the impression that B.C. alcohol prices, among the highest in the country, are now lower and more in line with displayed figures for bottles sold in, say, Ontario and Quebec, where all taxes are included. I recently received a similar complaint from a reader in Manitoba, which has long collected taxes at the till. My practice has been to list displayed prices in each province because I fear that either adding PST and GST (or subtracting it from prices in provinces that include those taxes) might confuse readers when they reach the store and find a different price quoted on shelves. I guess it's a case of buyer beware.
Safe to say that whether they're paying more at the till or not, Canadians will always pay through the nose for beverage alcohol.
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