Retailer working hard to protect tax exempt rights

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For Dwight Bergstrom, manager of Leisure Sports in Prince Albert, the customer is always number one.

Perhaps that sounds like a cliche, but when a store owner in the ever-competitive world of retail sales decides to do things above and beyond the call of duty, the description seems apt.

Oh, and was it mentioned that he also makes it possible for status Indians to avoid those dreaded taxes?

?We?ve been partners with Peter Ballantyne since ?96, but we?ve been doing business with First Nations people for a long time prior to that,? said Bergstrom. ?Where this whole delivery thing became a concern is when the federal government initially brought the GST into effect and made it applicable to treaty people unless goods were delivered to the reserve. So we?ve been doing that since the GST came in on larger ticket items. If it was a boat, motor, snowmobile, that type of thing, we were doing a delivery.?

It was when the business with the First Nation community really picked up that certain political entities chose to question the validity of the deliveries by changing the rules for Bergstrom.

?Originally, they had a thing that if the people at the reserve stamped (the correct paperwork) off, that proved there was a delivery to the reserve,? said Bergstrom.

?With the volume of business we do for First Nations people, there seemed to be a little bit of suspicion on Revenue Canada?s part that we were actually doing the delivery and that everything was above board,? Bergstrom explained.

?We actually take a picture to prove that we?ve delivered the merchandise over there.?

The bill for all of the Polaroid film used annually by Leisure Sports ranges between $1,000 to $1,200.

Then came March 30 of this year, when the provincial government decided to charge the PST to status card holders.

?We felt that we would take the delivery thing one step further and try and assist treaty people in not paying the GST or PST on anything that was purchased in our store.?

With the increase in taxation to the First Nation community, for Bergstrom, the decision to expand his services was that much easier.

Since many of the people who buy the boats and engines occasionally need to perform repair work, parts and accessories? sales are also hot commodities.

?We do a tremendous amount of purchases through our parts department,? said Bergstrom, adding, ?We find a lot of folks are in and they?re going to be around for the day, so what we do is accumulate all the purchases for that day, throw them in the back of our truck, have one of our guys run over, take a picture of the darn thing in front of the Peter Ballantyne office. Then all their purchases are both GST and PST exempt.?

Not only does Leisure Sports provide an avenue for their Aboriginal consumers to take to avoid paying taxes on their purchases through their store, but they also help them out in other ways.

?We do lots of things for them that we don?t have to do,? stated Bergstrom.

?We have a tremendous amount of folks that end up in town without vehicles, so we?re the taxi people at Christmas time. We?re running around picking up Christmas gifts from Sears and every place else, putting them on the plane, and whatever the heck it takes for our customers.?

The real reason Bergstrom does these extra things is because he understands some of their potential difficulties, especially if their address is in a remote community such as Stony Rapids or Uranium City, just to name a couple of examples.

?For lot of our First Nations customers, it?s a really costly thing to come into town,? said Bergstrom. ?It just becomes a matter of we?ve kind of told our customers that if there?s any special way that we can help them out a little bit that we will try and do that, and I guess this delivery thing is just sort of part of the package that we?re trying to put together to help these folks out.?

With all of the hoops Bergstrom has been forced to jump through by theauthorities, would it be fair to assume that he is somewhat annoyed with them?

?I?m a little, if you?ll pardon my French, pissed off with the government,? said Bergstrom emphatically. ?To me, it?s in support of our First Nations? customers. We appreciate their business, and we?re trying to help them in not paying a tax which I believe they?re just not supposed to pay in the first place.

?The other thing that really cheesed me off is this delivery-no delivery thing. As far as I?m concerned, what both the provincial and federal governments have done to all retailers is kind of made us look like the ?bad guys? and put the responsibility on to us to do this delivery thing. I guess part of it is to spite the government system a little bit. I know, talking to lots of business guys, I?m not the only one that feels that way. What a ridiculous law or rule to come up with!

?We?re going to say ?To heck with them,?? concluded Bergstrom, adding, ?We?re going to deliver as much stuff as we can to help our First Nations treaty people avoid paying as much tax as we can help them avoid paying.

?I think it is a goodwill gesture with our treaty customers as well, so it?s sort of a double whammy in our minds while we?re doing it.?