Quebec bar tax clampdown: will it hurt Montreal's nightlife?

   Montrealers will soon be getting little paper receipts with every purchase they make in a bar starting Feb. 1.
   The new SRM system aims to tackle tax evasion by bar owners who have been under-reporting their Quebec tax revenues as a method of avoiding payment.
   It appears that the charge will only apply to purchases for the moment and will not include entrance cover fees and tips to waitresses bathroom attendants or other staff, not for the moment at least.
   The same requirement was made of Quebec restaurants a couple of years back, causing quite a lot of scrambling as many establishments closed permanently a few months before the rules came into effect, possibly for fear that their real incomes would be exposed if they stayed open and complied with the new law.
   Meanwhile some other restaurants craftily closed for what they claimed were major renovations before the new rules started, so they could plausibly claim that their suddenly much-higher declared revenues were a result of the fantastic new changes they made.
   Starting Feb. 1 waitresses and bartenders will hand customers bills from every transaction complete with all sorts of information about the purchase.
   This could be handy if you wanted to track how many vodka tonics you drink per year in bars.
   But you probably don't.
   So all these little papers will do is likely incriminate you about the lie you told about fixing a flat tire in the pouring rain when you were really at Cafe Cleopatra's getting to know the 56 year old stripper described once on Coolooplis.
   Some anecdotal evidence suggested that many Quebec restaurants went broke after losing their ability to under-report their earnings.
   But statistics don't necessarily tell the whole picture, as bankruptcies shed light on only one category of closure, so it's not entirely clear what direct impact the SRM tax system had on local restaurants.
   Montreal's nightlife remains  is a central element of the urban economy and the city attracts many tourists a year from more boring places.
   Any dent in profits suffered by our drinking establishments could diminish the quality of life we enjoy as Montrealers.