Want cheaper access to American e-commerce? Better tell it to the feds: Neil Macdonald
Neil Macdonald · Senior Correspondent · CBC News
...Canadian retailers want to make sure their privileged access to Canadian consumers remains undisturbed by competition from outside the country. And, like the Italian taxi drivers, they're counting on government to ensure that.
There is a hot fight going on at the moment in Ottawa over Canada's so-called de minimis level – the threshold below which goods can enter the country tax- and duty-free. Since 1985, it has been $20 Cdn, the most restrictive level in the developed world. It might as well be zero.....
It's been said here that each time this particular Senior Correspondent writes on this topic for CBC that he does so with the righteous indignation of a man that has only just discovered for the first time that the great deal he found online by importing a 30-pack of men's underwear directly from the country of manufacturing isn't quite the same great deal he thought it was. Like he never bought anything online from another country himself before. Maybe he had people to do that for him in the past. And now he;s paying duty on his package, the Horror!
As for me, I pay my sales taxes at the border and and move onward. I don't mind paying taxes or taxes on import. I believe it supports all that makes Canada the country that it is. Americans can keep their cheaper goods, their higher de minimus, their presidential races..... The only American industry that I envy is the driving structure of their postal system.
Nonetheless, it's always worth reading to understand what people are saying and how they feel about issues.
