HST exemption given to newspapers

Newspaper subscribers will not have to pay the additional eight per cent sales tax when the new Harmonized Sales Tax comes into effect in July 2010. The news of new ‘point of sale rebates’ was announced Thursday by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, along with exemptions for some prepared foods and beverages.

“Community newspapers will be exempt from the HST. We thought long and hard about that one. We came to the conclusion that newspapers continue to play a vital role in democracy. They help engender an informed civil discourse. Everybody's got an opinion, but sometimes they are uninformed,” the Premier told CCNA President Mike Williscraft (Niagara this Week) in a telephone conversation on Thursday morning when making the announcement. “Newspapers play a vital role in that regard, so there is going to be a new exemption for our newspapers when it comes to HST, which, otherwise, would have been applied.”

OCNA President Abbas Homayed (Sudbury Northern Life) spoke with Sudbury MPP Rick Bartolucci at a community event on Thursday. Bartolucci said OCNA Publishers did a great job of stating their case during the OCNA Queen’s Park Day on October 21. Publishers from across Ontario attended meetings with MPPs and Ministers throughout the day to speak our case that newspaper readers should not be faced with an additional tax to read the news of their communities.

Although our industry has not been successful in obtaining an HST exemption for Classified Advertising as well, the point-of-sale rebate for subscribers will benefit readers of more than 120 community newspapers in Ontario, said OCNA Executive Director Anne Lannan. She credits CCNA/CNA CEO John Hinds who advocated on this issue throughout the summer on behalf of community and daily newspapers in the province. Our collective voices were heard.

The provincial government has classified newspapers as print newspapers that contain news, editorials, feature stories or other information of interest to the general public, and that are published at regular intervals, typically on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, but not flyers, inserts, magazines, periodicals and shoppers.

Update (May 27, 2010): For further information on the HST, visit: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/gi/gi-060/README.html