It’s supposed to simplify everything — one harmonized sales tax for both GST and PST, but it is causing a giant headache for Kimberley and other designated Resort Municipalities.

The Harmonized Sales Tax may simplify things for some, but it could spell the end for Kimberley’s destination marketing organization, Tourism Kimberley. The issue is the two separate two per cent hotel taxes. The first is the tax Kimberley citizens voted for which levies two percent on each room rental.

This generates about $80,000 annually and is a big part of Tourism Kimberley’s budget. The other is the two per cent in the government’s hotel taxes which is returned to Kimberley each year for development of tourism amenities.

The question right now is, with the HST coming in, will those hotel taxes disappear?

“We don’t know for sure,” said Mayor Jim Ogilvie. “It’s not been determined exactly what will happen. We have been urging the government to maintain it , especially the two percent hotel tax that people voted in favor of.

“Without that and the two per cent share of the government hotel tax, we’d be hard pressed to keep Tourism Kimberley alive. It’s a significant amount of money, about $160,000 between the two.”

And while that’s a chunk of change for Kimberley, it’s a lot bigger deal for a community like Whistler.

“For Whistler it’s quite a few million,” Ogilvie said. “Even Golden is $2 million, because they are on the Number 1 highway and have all those hotels along it. They get a lot.”

Ogilvie says the government is aware of the issue and the Ministry of Tourism has been talking to communities about it.

“They will maintain it through until 2011,” Ogilvie said. “In the meantime we will try to come up with a solution.”

He says the government does understand that it’s a problem.

“I don’t think they would ignore it. This is probably one of those things that nobody thought of when the HST was introduced. They probably thought it would be simple and never thought about things like this.”