Small businesses in Saskatchewan are looking at their numbers as the province has reintroduced a small business tax this month.
The original small business tax was two per cent, before being cut during the pandemic as a way to help businesses.
Now the province has partially reinstated that tax, raising that to one per cent this year and two per cent next July.
Estevan Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jackie Wall says that it’s tough to predict how businesses will fare with that tax return.
“It’s a difficult question to answer because several industries have bounced back quite well and there are other industries that are still feeling some of the pressure, not so much of the actual pandemic now, but just getting things back into regular operations because we are now in a different operating scenario than we were before the pandemic.”
“Things have changed and shifted, businesses have been dealing with that and a lot of them had a lot of debt and caught up to do because of the pandemic. I think overall this was expected, the government made it very clear during COVID that this was going to be an interim measure of getting rid of the small business tax, but they are now going to implement that and businesses need to prepare.”
Wall says business owners should have a handle on their finances as a number of factors are set to influence them in the future.
“Business owners need to always stay on top of their finances. We have a lot happening in our business sector right now, we’ve got inflation, we have Bank of Canada’s rates increasing, and now we’re going to have this tax. “
“Take the time to look at your cash flow and how this is going to impact your business and then definitely take advantage of talking to professionals, investment professionals, accounting professionals, and other business professionals to see what you can do to make your business more efficient and also more profitable.”
