Policy Forum: Visibility and Accountability -- Is Tax-Inclusive Pricing a Good Thing?

This article considers a simple question: Does it make a difference if people can see a tax? Underlying this question are some serious but as yet largely unexplored methodological and political issues concerning both the relationship between tax economics and tax policy and the connection between tax politics and the functioning of democracy in a complex modern society, This brief consideration of the pros and cons of changing the present treatment of the goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) in Canada raises, but does not resolve, many of these issues. Nonetheless, since hiding the tax bill does not seem a particularly attractive way to build a sustainable democratic consensus in support of fiscal equilibrium, the article concludes that there is much to be said for continuing the current general practice of quoting the GST/HST separately {tax-exclusive pricing) rather than moving to the tax-inclusive pricing found in most value-added taxes around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]