Canada dealt foreign tourists a blow yesterday by eliminating the GST rebate for foreign visitors. Though it was among the largest budget cuts a government official defended the move saying that only 939,000 visitors applied for the rebate over a one year period. The Globe and Mail reports:
One of the biggest cuts hits foreign visitors to Canada. The Tories are eliminating the Goods and Services Tax rebate program, which allows foreigners to recoup the GST they pay while in the country.
Mr. McCallum warned that this will discourage tourism, which is already hurting from a stronger Canadian dollar and could be further damaged by pending U.S. border restrictions.
“It’s not the time to give the tourism industry a punch in the nose,” he said.
But the Canada Revenue Agency defended the reduction, saying less than 3 per cent of foreign visitors — 939,000 — applied for rebates in one recent year.
September 26, 2006 
Comments (11)
Count me with the 939,000 who took a GST rebate. I visit family in Canada frequently and am not happy about this. If the program is so unimportant, why cut it. I’d guess that most of these visitors are Americans and that the government is just hoping we don’t hear about the cut. The GST there is 7% and some Provinces have a PST too. National Health Care is great for Canadians, but we shouldn’t have to pay for it.
They know you’ll hear about it. Obviously when you try to get a rebate and they tell you that you can’t, you’ll hear about it. They’re just betting it won’t stop you from visiting Canada.
We visit Canada frequently (a couple of times every year) and stay in hotels. The termination of the GST rebate in addition to the Vancouver room tax escalation to 10% will force us to look for more affordable visitor friendly destinations.
John Nychay
Will think twice about visiting or buying goods because of the termination of the rebate.
From what I can tell, the Canadian government has reinstated some of the tax rebate but it’s only for conventions and tours. Forget about us lowly souls that populate hotels & motels, B&Bs, campgrounds, and cottages and bring in millions of tourist dollars. I didn’t even know about the elimination of the program until I was getting a receipt for a week’s lodging. This was the fourth time I’d been to Canada in the course of five years and I had filed twice. Once I did not file because a friend had the lodging in her name and I did not buy enough goods to qualify.
But two previous years that I went up, I spent significant amounts (for me, anyway) on schools supplies and school clothes for my school-aged child. After I was told about the end of the tax rebate I didn’t shop as much as I had planned. I still wasn’t sure about the rebate but when I looked it up I found that my B&B owner was indeed correct.
I’m not likely to take a tour or go to a convention, but I will return to Canada again. I won’t bother to head to the mall to spend much money unless the exchange rate gets better. Why should I pay 14% to 15% tax on something that I spend 5% tax on here? Since I live in Massachusetts I don’t even pay tax on clothing and I can easily go to New Hampshire if I want to save more taxes.
I don’t think I’m alone – we saw far fewer cars with US license plates at the mall, and fewer US cars in general. It’s too bad – between the new US rules on passports, and the Canadain near-elimination of the tax rebate, it will be hard for us to convince anyone they should travel to Canada.
[...] in response to this post, Joanne writes to tell us that the Canadian Government has reinstated rebates for some visitors: [...]
Get a life people your using Canadian services from roadways to our subways and more . Do we get a rebate anymore when we visit the world , the answer is NO the majority of countries never offered this generous rebate or cut it a long time ago or put so many restrivtive rules such as a maximum dollar purchase to be eligible.
I am so tired of hearing how people are not getting the bargain of the past when they visit Canada, wake up you want to buy our OIL and other commodities you pay in Canadian dollar and drive up our dollar on the world money markets so don’t blame us anymore for our currency being the same as yours. We are not the bargain basement store at Maceys, we are an international country and respect our tax policies like we have to when we visit your countries.
After being a frequent visitor to Canada we have just cancelled our proposed visit to Canada for 2009 owing to these hostile measures taken against tourists to Canada. We are re-scheduling to a country that does give tourist refunds for tax paid within the country. I hope that our country singles out Canadians who visit here NOT to receive tourist tax-refunds from us.
DO NOT USE MY EMAIL ADDRESS FOR PROMOTIONAL OFFERS.
We were a Puerto Rican family of 29 on Aug 31 wkend. I protested to the hotel for the dollarexchange rate that was substantially different from the original quote. Then the tourist taxes!Since our group travels a lot we certainly are not going to make the future trip we had planned to Quebec.
in response to Michael…Do you know of any other country that charges 13, 14 or even 15 % tax on goods bought…I’ve lived in Japan for the last 11 years and the sales tax is only 5%, and the price you see is the price you pay! It is not added at the cash register like it is here. I used to come back every year and enjoyed getting the GST rebate. Now I don’t want to buy anything cause it is cheaper other places!! Better inform yourself about other countries taxes.
So, when did the elimination of the rebate for GST take place and what is the last date you can still claim it?