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January 15, 2010
To: BC ELN Directors
Cc: BC ELN Collection Development Team
Re: Good news!: BC to partially rebate the HST for public post-secondary institutions
BC's Finance Minister Colin Hansen said yesterday that the BC government will provide partial rebates on the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) to public universities and colleges. According to the CBC story, public post-secondary institutions will get a 75% rebate on the 12% HST.
At present BC ELN partner libraries pay no PST and a partially rebated GST on licensed databases. Two-thirds of the GST is rebated, so libraries pay a rate of 1.65% (one third of 5%) on most database licenses. BC ELN invoices refer to this as "unrecoverable GST".
Under the new HST, database licenses will no longer be exempt from the provincial portion of the sales tax. It was feared libraries would have to pay the full amount. We now estimate that the HST rate will be 3% (one quarter of the full 12% HST).
The BC ELN will update libraries when this information is confirmed. We will also inform libraries when we have more information about the potential impact of the HST on other services invoiced by BC ELN.
The HST will take effect on July 1, 2010.
For more information on the CBC story please see: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/01/14/bc-hst-rebate-institutions-hansen.html
