Good news for anyone who’s watched their grocery checkout total creep up lately. This Wednesday, July 15, Quebec is dropping the Quebec Sales Tax on a whole range of items you’ll find at the grocery store, the pharmacy and the dépanneur.
The move goes back to an announcement Premier Christine Fréchette’s government made in May. And unlike the federal GST break that came and went a couple of winters back, this one is here to stay. The province estimates a family of four will save somewhere around $50 a year from it.
Part of the reasoning, according to Fréchette, was to clean up a quirk in the old rules, where the very same product might get taxed on its own but slip through untaxed once you bought it in a six-pack.
What’s actually getting cheaper?
The tax break is tied to specific sizes, rather than entire product categories. Revenu Québec spelled out the thresholds. Starting Wednesday, there’s no more QST on:
- Ice cream, ice milk, sorbet, frozen yogurt and frozen custard, in single servings under 500 g or 500 ml
- Doughnuts, cookies, glazed or filled croissants, cakes, muffins, pastries, tarts and tartlets, either sold on their own under 230 g or in packs of fewer than six
- Custards, flavoured jellies, mousses and flavoured whipped desserts, in single servings under 425 g
- Prepared fruit salads and fruit platters (cut, washed, that kind of thing), sold for one price
- Prepared veggie platters, same deal
- Salted or seasoned nuts and seeds, as long as sugar isn’t the main seasoning
- Trail mix and similar blends built mostly from oats, cereal, seeds, nuts or dried fruit, whether it’s a bar or loose in bulk
- Toilet paper and facial tissues
However, if you grab one of these somewhere that already taxes basically all its food, like most restaurants, you’ll still pay the QST. The same goes for anything out of a vending machine or served as part of a catering order.
Stuff that was already tax-free
This all piles on top of the groceries that never got hit with GST or QST in the first place. For those trying to keep the receipt short, that list covers meat (beef, poultry, pork, lamb, deli meats, sausages and so on), cereal, fruit, vegetables, eggs, bread, fish, and dairy like plain milk, cheese, butter, cream and yogurt.
The tax change is one piece of a bigger cost-of-living package. The government also knocked about $50 off licence plate renewal fees, kicking in automatically come September, and sent out a one-time payment of up to $200 per household for groceries and energy back in June.