The verdict is in— nobody knows the details of Ontario’s impending Harmonized Sales Tax (HST.)

The province set to harmonize its retail sales tax with the federal goods and services tax from July 1, 2010, which requires Ottawa to bring forward legislation by March 31.

Since the surprise announcement was made this year, analysts, business owners and farmers have heard every kind of rumour — the tax will reduce paperwork, it will increase costs; even that it’s the same old situation under a new name.

What remains unclear is what kind of impact the HST will have on the general public— and farmers are especially concerned.

"We were at a dealer grassroots meeting yesterday and that was one of the issues brought up under the topic ‘What are you losing sleep over?’" said Stacey Weagant, a board member on the Canada East Equipment Dealers’ Association (CEEDA.)

Weagant is finance manager at Weagant Equipment Sales in Winchester. She said she sees the potential advantage for equipment dealerships, in that paperwork could be reduced when the tax is introduced.

"If HST comes in and I have to charge every person both taxes, I won’t have to keep those Retail Sales Tax forms anymore. The onus would only be on the end user to prove that they are or should be exempt from the HST. It’s a reduction in the workload for me," she said.

The flipside of that benefit is that farmers buying or leasing equipment could be faced with more paperwork than ever— or higher costs.

"Nobody knows for sure if these exemptions for farmers will continue, and that will have a direct impact on farmers. If they suddenly have to pay an 8 per cent tax that they weren’t paying before, even if they get rebates it still ties up the money," she said.

And farmers looking to lease equipment for their operations are stuck in the same sort of quandary as the dealers— no one knows how much they’ll wind up paying come July.

"Every current lessee who is exempt from PST, on their payment per month they pay whatever the dollar amount is plus GST. Then they can claim back the GST to their leasing company for their leasing payments. But if they change the tax rule, I suspect the question is whether their lease payments will go up," she said.

It’s tough for Weagant too because she doesn’t want to hurt her customers or the business by not knowing how much to charge. "Dealers are as anxious about it as our customers are because we don’t want to charge a tax we’re not supposed to."

At the Canadian Federation for Independent Businesses (CFIB), policy analyst Plamen Petkov echoed Weagant’s concerns.

"Farmers are concerned about the implementation of the HST, for the most part because they don’t know the actual impact of HST on the operation. When you don’t know what’s going to hit, you assume the worst," he said.

The CFIB has 42,000 members in Ontario, 2,500 of whom are agri-business owners. Petkov criticized the federal and provincial governments for springing such massive tax reform on Ontarians with minimum public consultation.

"We have been very vocal about the lack of consultation on this reform. The government has not done enough to provide information and groups like farmers are suffering as a result. We need the Finance and Revenue ministries to offer more details to the public," he said.