Restaurants Canada – a trade association representing Canadian foodservice operators – is requesting the Newfoundland and Labrador government help struggling restaurants by exempting them from insurance premium tax.
Luc Erjavec, Restaurants Canada Atlantic vice-president, wrote a letter to Premier Dwight Ball and Finance Minister Tom Osborne that had a list of requests aimed at helping restaurants – one of which asks for the elimination of the 15% tax on restaurants’ insurance.
Erjavec’s letter explained that within NL, 6,500 people work in the restaurant industry, spread across 1,200 businesses. While sizable, the vice-president noted that NL’s economy has “lagged behind all other provinces,” with an average annual decline of 0.1% over the past five years.
Because of this, NL’s restaurateurs have been struggling to get by, Erjavec wrote in his letter. To make matters worse, a blizzard struck the province on January 17, which made it more difficult for the restaurant industry to recover any lost revenue.
To take the pressure off restaurant operators, Erjavec’s letter requested that the local industry be exempt from the 15% provincial tax on insurance premiums. The 15% retail tax on insurance was levied on all insurance premiums in the province as part of NL’s 2016 budget, but it was dropped on auto insurance tax for the 2019 provincial budget, The Telegram reported.
Erjavec also requested other measures, such as wholesale pricing on alcohol, adjusting minimum wage for inflation, introducing a lower training wage, as well as a lower liquor-serving wage that “[recognizes] the significant gratuities earned by servers.”
