On Thu, Jun 21, 2012 at 7:09 PM, Peter
Dolding
<..hidden..>
wrote:
Chris Travers <..hidden..>
> The problem which no single business can
address as such is the fact
> that all these different jurisdictions are, well,
different. They
> change their regulations on different schedules, the
regulations may
> be somewhat nuanced, and so forth. This means that
this is not a
> problem which is well suited to a single player in the
industry to
> solve, and it really requires local voices who know the
regulations
> both in theory and practice, and can act as a voice
helping the
> community figure out what we need to do to meet the
regulatory
> requirements.
This is another reason for having a list. Australia has a
very fixed
schedules. Tax system changes between june 30 and july1 at
midnight.
No official tax change can be applied at any other time in
the year.
Information about proposed changes are released before that
and is
basically locked in 2 months before the date so software can
change.
Also that gives you 12 months to implement the change fully
for
anything other than bas reporting. Business activity
reporting is 1
month for large companies 3 months for medium companies and 12
months
for small companies. Yes those 3 months reports are all at
exactly
the same time. So small business you have 12 months to
implment mid
range business you have 3 months to implement. So yes there
is a
bias to get large businesses to chip in. Since they will
require it
first. This should make getting partners that can pay
simpler.
Ok, I see two problems with a lot of this. The first is that
while something like sales tax is relatively straight-forward,
a lot of things do depend on implementation, and there may be
nuance there. For example, I don't really know what the
effect of HST on the question of whether a muffin sold in a
coffee shop in Toronto (Ontario, Canada), and if HST hasn't
greatly affected the rules there, I wouldn't want to be in
charge of making sure my interpretation of the rules were
correct.
As I say I don't know what the current state is after HST was
implemented, but before then, the tax rate depended on what
else the customer bought. As I understand the previous rules:
If the muffin is not individually wrapped and you buy fewer
than six then it is taxable if and only if the subtotal of all
prepared foods and beverages is greater than $4 CAD. On the
other hand if it is individually wrapped then it is always
taxable unless another prepared food or beverage is purchased
and the subtotal is less than $4 CAD.
I see this as a classic example of where someone on the ground
really must address the sales tax directly, or at least work
with us to do so. I am not sticking my neck out there
interpreting rules like that.