Taxes
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$10.00 = $10.70 ?!? |
Imagine for yourself that you've stepped into a store. You find something you really like. Say a book, if you're in a bookstore. Perhaps a refreshing bottle of water, if you're at the corner store. Maybe even that computer you've been saving all your money for. You look at the item and there's the price. Okay, for simplicity, let's say you want to buy the book. The price tag on the book says that it costs $10. Thankfully, you just have $10 in your pocket. No more, no less. You go to the cashier to pay for the book. The cashier puts the amount into the cash register. You look at the display to see the final price. You expect "10.00" to magically appear, but to your horror, it does not say that. The display says the book costs "10.70." $10.70!! But you only have $10 in your pocket. Where are you going to get this extra 70 cents? Better question: where did this extra 70 cent charge come from?
Believe it or not, this is what most North Americans live with everyday when they go shopping. You've just been introduced to the lovely world of "sales tax." When a North American goes to buy a product, he must pay an additional charge called the sales tax. The tax is charged by the government. That government might be the provincial or state government. That government might be the federal or national government. In my province of British Columbia, both provincial and federal governments have sales tax on the goods we buy. In the province of Alberta, there is no provincial sales tax, but there is still a federal sales tax. The taxes are meant to provide the government with money in order to maintain itself. The sales tax is one of many, many taxes that governments use to collect money from its citizens.
I have a friend who came from China to study in Vancouver. When I first went out with her to go shopping. She would pick up what she wanted and take it to the cashier. She had calculated in her head how much everything would cost. So she had all her money prepared when she arrived at the cash register. Then the cashier would take her goods and put the prices into the cash register. Then, the cashier would tell her number different from the number she calculated in her head. She had this perplexed look on her face. She was sure that the products cost less than what the cashier was saying.
I wasn't sure at first why my friend was confused. Then she mentioned her confusion to me and then I quickly understood. As for as I know from my experience, in Chinese department stores, the price on the tag is the price that you pay for. In Canada, the story was different. The price on the tag is not what you pay in the end. We usually keep in mind that we have to pay a sales tax. So I would have known in my head that the $10 book would actually cost me $10.70. Remember that bottle of water I mentioned. A typical bottle costs about $1.25. With tax in my province, that would cost me $1.34. How about that computer I mentioned earlier. A decent computer at an affordable price costs about $1000. After tax, that computer could cost you about $1070. As the item gets more expensive, so does the tax. You could imagine for yourself what the tax on a new car must be.
So for those of you out there who have never experienced a sales tax, what do you think? Could you imagine yourself paying for more than what the price tag says? Does the idea of a sales tax seem strange to you? Would you want a sales tax when you went buy things?