The finance department has proposed changes to the Harmonized Sales Tax rules for financial institutions that experts say will prevent jurisdiction shopping to avoid the tax.
With Ontario and British Columbia proceeding to harmonize their taxes with the GST this summer, some financial services executives - namely CI Financial CEO Bill Holland - suggested they'd look at shifting business away from Ontario.
Late on Wednesday the finance department issued a long and highly complex series of changes to the tax rules that experts say will remove the incentive to move business out of B.C. and Ontario. (You can see the changes here).
The government says the "proposed changes are intended to provide for a level playing field for financial institutions in terms of where they locate or where they purchase their business inputs, and result in the appropriate amount of tax collected for HST provinces."
The changes are open for comment until June 9.