GST: Clarifying what you will see on receipts

I DO not like writing letters to the JEP more often than is necessary, but I do have to take issue with the headline JEP, 30 April) where you state ‘GST will not be on receipts’.

That headline totally misrepresents the outcome of the States debate the previous day, and a more accurate report would have said ‘GST need not be on receipts’. Sadly neither the headline nor the body of the report reflects that fact, and instead infers, from the opening sentence, that Islanders were not going to know how much GST they were paying once the tax was introduced.

Most Islanders probably appreciate that for every £1 they spend buying goods in future, roughly 3p is accounted for by GST and many businesses will display the amount of GST contained within the total paid on their till receipts. All the States decided on 29 April was that this would not be a mandatory requirement at the present time (although it may well become a requirement in the future). I should also point out that it is not mandatory in the UK or France and many other places at the present time, either.

While I am sure you did not intend to mislead the public, I have to say that my office has been the recipient of numerous phone calls from worried retailers who were quite rightly expecting to display the GST on their receipts, and now feared (unnecessarily) that if they did so they might somehow be breaking the law.

For their benefit and for those shoppers who may be surprised to see that their till receipt does show GST, I should be grateful if this point could be clarified.

Cyril Le Marquand House, The Parade, St Helier.