The incoming Goods and Services Tax (GST) made its presence known on Saturday and
Sunday, the last weekend before 1 April 2015. I went out on Saturday morning to
buy milk and some vegetables from the week, and was startled by the amount of
people already up and about at the local supermarket. Of course, one could
argue that it just happens to be a weekend where most people would have
received their salaries, but any regular weekend shopper will have observed that
the numbers were far more than is the norm.
Let’s be realistic, whenever a new tax is introduced, the
default position of the public as a whole is that prices will go up. You can argue
it however you want, but new tax typically equals to likely price increase. The
cost of the implementation alone has had significant impact for companies, and it’ll
be a tough time to be convinced otherwise, so the safest way is to adopt a ‘play
it safe’, ’just in case’ attitude and do some stocking up.
Naturally, there are of course businesses out to exploit the
situation. Pre-GST sales have been on a rampage, and very little has been done
by the authorities to clamp down on this. Whether the businesses are hypermarkets,
pharmacies or sporting goods, most of the sales conveniently end on 31 March
2015. I confess to succumbing to a few arguably good deals myself, such is the
lure of sales.
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