My crystal ball is twitching... OMG it's big bucks...

Dear BC Politicians,

If we have clients who have not called their energy suppliers to remove the HST Residential Energy Credit from their energy bills, and they wish to report and pay what they owe, what would the process look like?

Would they have to remit the entire amount, and then claim a rebate, or can you simplify this for us as I am positive that the compliance on this was almost nil.

I blogged and wrote about it, but I'm sure it wasn't done.

For someone with a home office, who has energy bills of about $2500 a year, that's about $500 in credit over the period from July 1, 2010 to March 31, 2013.

Most people's home office is about 10 or 15% of their home, so this is about $50 or $75 they owe net of a reimbursement. Of course, if they all wait, and don't do this within 2 years of claiming the credit illegally, you could have a huge cash grab on your hands, at $500 x 400,000 = $20 Million, yes, it does add up quickly.

Yes, there are 400,000 small business's in BC, and a good number of them have home offices and yes, that does constitute a significant figure, as in 400,000 x $50 is about $2 Million dollars.

Can we please have a process that will clean this up and make it easy for people to comply?

We really don't need more red tape for the sake of $50 or $75 from each small business. And we really can't afford the ill will of $500 per plus penalties of 10% or 25% as currently set out in the legislation.