Report: U.S. officials seek to slash duties
A report in The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper, quotes an anonymous U.S. official who says that officials are seeking to slash tariffs for border-crossing shoppers.
That could be good news for shop owners on the U.S. side of the border. Tariffs are the pesky taxes that Canadians have to pay when they come over here and buy a whole mess of goods. With a strong Canadian dollar, and relatively low U.S. taxes, Canadians are coming over in droves. They'd come over at an even higher rate if tariffs were lowered or eliminated.
But Canadian officials worry of the effect it could have on stores on the Canadian side — and decreased tax revenue as more and more shoppers (theoretically) cross the border.
The article is a bit vague on this point, saying that U.S. officials are "pressing the (Canadian) federal government to loosen the rules so that fewer Canadians have to stop and pay duties as they return from a trip to the United States."
There's another, separate issue at play here. What the article talks about is lowering the tariff burden — a "personal exemption."
U.S. Rep. Bill Owens also put in a bill last year that would raise the amount of goods you can cross the border with, without paying taxes on it, from $200 to $1,000. The hope would be that Canadians would follow suit, but the bill didn't pass last year. It's introduced this year by Republican Rep. Aaron Schock of Illinois.
Mr. Owens, with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, wrote to Canadian officials on the matter:
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty responded with this letter, that didn't seem too hot on the idea:
"We got some pushback from the government in terms of revenue loss," Mr. Owens told me today.
I asked Mr. Owens what he felt about slashing tariffs, and he was noncommittal, saying that he hadn't studied the issue yet.
