B.C. back to 5% GST + 7% PST

[MacNews]

Look at places like Oregon with no state sales tax, the US has no federal sales tax, and places like Nevada and Florida with no state income-tax. No way are you going to tell me that Canadians pay less tax. Only in Alberta would be even be a possibility.

I am not pleased that restaurant meals will not get the 12% treatment..now I have no money left to tip.

[Robbie]

See who else is upset with the HST. Our former premier, Bill Vander Zalm.

http://www.theprovince.com/news/gets+pr ... story.html

Despite all the controversy about him when he sold Fantasy Gardens, at least he kept the BC PST to a minimal 6% during his reign.

[Robbie]

Now the NDP is joining the fight against the HST.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columb ... ycles.html

[Toppy Vann]

See who else is upset with the HST. Our former premier, Bill Vander Zalm.

http://www.theprovince.com/news/gets+pr ... story.html

Despite all the controversy about him when he sold Fantasy Gardens, at least he kept the BC PST to a minimal 6% during his reign.

The timing of this is absolutely disgusting with taxpayers and families and businesses hit hard by the financial crisis. Mr. Campbell who fought the GST is doing this for the financial windfall it will bring his gov't's books. He also knows he can't be defeated in the Legislature.

The HST makes long term sense for all of Canada BUT long term only. Gordon Campbell sees a financial windfall if he does it to his citizenry so he is doing this to make his books look better. That is all he cares about. He has been the guy when Mayor of Vancouver who decried the GST. That tax shut many small businesses and sent a lot of business underground as the needed tax cuts were slow and insufficient to keep consumers doing well. The HST will do the same and will drive up costs for those who can least afford it.

Canada is relatively well off and while I work here in Hong Kong (15% tax) I very much appreciate what we have in Canada in the way of our health care system and while not purrfect how we treat our seniors. When I see these stories about how wonderful places like Hong Kong and how free their economy is, etc, (Fraser Institute) it makes me annoyed as you should see how old people here without means or families who can support them at home live. You just need to look at the windows of the double decker buses or even at street level and look in these place for seniors that look like war time hospitals with nothing but beds and curtains dividing them. As for health, it is mixed public and private and I'd rate Canada better as here in HK money determines for many the quality of care.

Bottom line for the HST - bad for consumers! Good for gov't books! Is that fair? right? No but who can stop this guy.

Just reading a book by a person I know James O'Toole "Creating the Good Life" - where he uses Aristotle's teaches to determine what a good life is. He cites executive compensation: In 1970 aver total compensation for execs (1998 dollars) of a Fortune 100 corp. was 39 times a workers salary at 1.3M. By 1999, these guys were taking 1000 times a workers salary of $35000. During the 90s average workers pay rose by 37% while execs rose 571%. A small sample but not unusual thinking when it comes to a sense of entitlement.

Governments have as much a sense of entitlement to our tax dollars as do people who want to rip off the system for welfare or unemployment. It's just that the gov'ts can do it legally.

The other irony is that these same guys in gov't who are sticking it to the little guy such as people paying today more of their post secondary education costs have all like me got to where they on cheaper higher education proving to me that this education for those who will do the work is a benefit to society and should not be just function of ability to pay. They can get it back later in taxes. Gov'ts don't have endless supplies of money but post secondary education is getting too costly as one example. Oh, back in the 1970s there were fantastic jobs in forestry, etc that financed our cheaper educations. Try getting one of them today.







Economists of all stripes agree with taxing consumption but this means that the income tax levels have to be lower. In Canada, our governments want it both ways and taxpayers are getting it from all levels of gov't. Mr. Harper should have cut income taxes not the GST when he had a chance to help families with lower incomes. They use these examples of PST on new homes and cars but the average family is paying for food, housing, clothing and education versus those big ticket items.

After the Mulroney years (he brought in GST) Canada needed to get their deficit in line and they did and that meant taxes and sur-taxes. We tax payers got the gov't books in line but it has left many struggling (not me). What I have felt was wrong that when the gov't had things under control they didn't do enough to lower taxes (especially for the lower income earning groups).

[Robbie]

As if the HST wasn't bad enough, Metro Vancouver mayors have voted to raise the regional gas tax, parking tax and transit fares to generate extra funding required to keep the area's transportation system running.

That's British Columbia and Vancouver.

[Lions4ever]

That's British Columbia and Vancouver.

Yes, the land of lazy, greedy tax-addicted politicians.

[Robbie]

Ontario will be revising their HST. Is that a precedence for BC?

Food and beverages sold for under $4 in Ontario will be exempt from the eight per cent provincial component of the new harmonized sales tax, a government source said Thursday.

[Robbie]

British Columbians kill the HST with 54-per-cent referendum vote. And by fighting the HST since the beginning, it looks like ex-Socred premier Bill Vander Zalm has finally redeemed the respect of British Columbians after resigning in disgrace 20 years ago after the sale of Fantasy Gardens scandal. But it looks BC must wait until March 2013 when the province returns to the 7% PST + 5% GST system.

According to CBC, some of the items that consumers can expect — in 18 months — to once again be PST-exempt include:

New homes over $525,000.
Real estate fees.
Moving services.
Home renovations and landscaping.
Purchase or lease of a fuel efficient vehicle.
Restaurant meals and snack foods.
Domestic flights, coach bus, rail and taxi.
Sporting events, movie tickets, gym memberships, concerts, camping sites
Beauty salon services.
Over-the-counter medications.
School supplies.
Wedding expenses.
Telephone and TV service.

But when the system is repealed in 18 months it's very possible that BC retailers will simply increase their products and services by 7%, just like how they increased prices by 2% when the GST decreased 2%.

[Sir Purrcival]

Yes, this will result in some of these items going back to non-taxed status but it is going to come at a big cost.

1. We are gong to have to pay back the incentive money we received for signing up $1.6 Billion I believe. That is extra debt and that has an associated price.
2. We are going to have to pony up for civil servants and infrastructure to collect the tax again. We know how cheap that is likely to be.
3. Businesses are going to have to revamp their POS systems again which will be expensive and inconvenient.
4. Businesses also get to go back to the hodge podge of exempt/not exempt stuff especially grocers and IT technicians such as myself who had to collect the tax for some items and not others.
5. We also get to deal with two tax bureaucracies once again. Oh what fun that can be.

As a self-employed businessman, I can tell you this isn't a good thing for me. I do my own books, pay the tax man his due and carry on. My work has just increased, got a lot more complicated again and I'm not sure if we are doing this to "punish the Liberals" or "repeal a bad tax". It seemed like every tax expert I heard on the subject seemed to think that it was a better system of taxation than GST/PST. If this was meant as an expression of Liberal dislike, then we are a bunch of tools. If it was really a poorer system of taxation then, that is another matter. I guess we will find out in 18 months time. In the meantime, I wonder how many jobs are going to be put on hold for 18 months while people wait for certain tax exemptions to re-apply.

There is a saying " You can never really go back". I fear that is going to be very true here. We may have the GST/PST system back but there is going to be a lot of longer term spin off here and none of it is going to be good. Perhaps we shouldn't have gone to this system in the first place but we did. Now I am wondering if we have merely compounded our woes by going back.

[WestCoastJoe]

It may well have been a vote against Gordon Campbell.

And Vanderzalm as a figurehead may have given the anti-HST votes the boost they needed.

All the publicity I heard was against the HST. I never heard any lobbying for it.

As it happens, I misplaced the voting papers, and forgot about it until too late. If I had researched the issue I am not sure how I would have voted, possibly in favour of keeping the HST. It is ironic that it is only now that I hear arguments in the media supporting the HST. It was not a big issue for me personally. Sorry about that I say to those who have passionate views on the issue ... I do always vote federally and provincially in choosing our government.

[jcalhoun]

Hey all,

Have you ever noticed that it's a 'penny for your thoughts', but you have to 'put your two cents in?' Somebody's skimming all that revenue, and I bet they're in Victoria.

I voted to keep the HST, because I believe it was a good policy for some of the larger employers in the Province. I also think a simplified tax code is a net benefit, as is eliminating a layer of government employees that oversaw the collection/accounting, etc. I also dislike the notion of trying something new, and then scrapping it before we have a chance to really see if it is beneficial or not. But that's just me.

That said, I see the benefits of scrapping the tax as well. My mother had a restaurant for more than a decade that had to close recently, and the straw that broke her back was the HST. When I look at the major purchases that most people make in their lives (houses, vehicles, major renovations to property, etc) the HST adds a significant amount to each purchase. For example, my father's house in Poco is worth well above 600k, and it's just a 1970's 3-bedroom, 2 level home, and there isn't anything special about it. Were I to buy that home today, the HST would add more than $6,000 to that purchase. That's a lot of coin.

What's more, as someone who has a lot of associates that work in trades, I know an awful lot of them are doing 'off the books' work on the side, solely to get around the HST. The underground economy is difficult to measure, but I wonder how significant those lost tax dollars are. I'd expect to see an uptick in the economy based solely on under the table work suddenly coming onto the books when the old system is reinstated.

There may just be a philosophical benefit to scrapping the HST as well. Not only will governments be more cautious (and hopefully forthcoming) about such measures in the future, but Victoria may just be forced to trim some fat from other areas of government to make up for the cost of reinstating the previous tax structure. That might not be a bad thing. We'll see.

My political views are right of centre, and I'm no fan of either of the two major political parties in BC. The Socreds
were deservedly destroyed, but the more I read about provincial politics, the more I think we need a third party in BC. A few years of minority governments in Victoria might be a blessing, if only to keep the corruption of the Liberals and the incompetence of the NDP in check simultaneously.

Cheers,

James

[Sir Purrcival]

I agree with most of your post except maybe the underground economy coming back to light. I don't see this as changing much as it isn't only the HST that people are striving to avoid, it is Income Tax as well. The under the table business practise has been around long before the advent of the HST and will continue now that it has been repealed. Will it change slightly, maybe, not enough to matter I suspect. Ethics is at the heart of this one mostly. Either you are willing to do it or you aren't and if you fall into the former, then any saving you might realize is enough to induce you to do it.

[Toppy Vann]

Yes, this will result in some of these items going back to non-taxed status but it is going to come at a big cost.

1. We are gong to have to pay back the incentive money we received for signing up $1.6 Billion I believe. That is extra debt and that has an associated price.
2. We are going to have to pony up for civil servants and infrastructure to collect the tax again. We know how cheap that is likely to be.
3. Businesses are going to have to revamp their POS systems again which will be expensive and inconvenient.
4. Businesses also get to go back to the hodge podge of exempt/not exempt stuff especially grocers and IT technicians such as myself who had to collect the tax for some items and not others.
5. We also get to deal with two tax bureaucracies once again. Oh what fun that can be.

As a self-employed businessman, I can tell you this isn't a good thing for me. I do my own books, pay the tax man his due and carry on. My work has just increased, got a lot more complicated again and I'm not sure if we are doing this to "punish the Liberals" or "repeal a bad tax". It seemed like every tax expert I heard on the subject seemed to think that it was a better system of taxation than GST/PST. If this was meant as an expression of Liberal dislike, then we are a bunch of tools. If it was really a poorer system of taxation then, that is another matter. I guess we will find out in 18 months time. In the meantime, I wonder how many jobs are going to be put on hold for 18 months while people wait for certain tax exemptions to re-apply.

There is a saying " You can never really go back". I fear that is going to be very true here. We may have the GST/PST system back but there is going to be a lot of longer term spin off here and none of it is going to be good. Perhaps we shouldn't have gone to this system in the first place but we did. Now I am wondering if we have merely compounded our woes by going back.

This is why as much as we hated the HST implementation my wife (I am away) voted to keep it despite the disgusting way in which both Mr. Campbell and Mr. Harper did this at such a poor time in the economy. It was what was being taxed that turned off the average voter as well as the blatant lies that it was not about to be put in all the while Mr. Harper and Mr. Campbell knew that the deal was all but done! It did not get done on the back of an envelope post the prior BC election as we were being told.

Consumption taxes are fairer taxes but gov'ts today want it both ways. Income AND consumption taxes. You have to give voters relief somehow.

The stories of how this (like the GST before it) killed small businesses are true. People will temporarily stop spend discretionary dollars just because they can.

The referendum issue was totally flawed and no winners came out of that.

I'd like to see the Clark gov't get a chance to govern but this albatross is huge as was the governing of her predecessor who lost touch with the people.

[KnowItAll]

this result shows that there are too many morons out there. Probably the same people cross border shopping. Short sighted. Just looking at today and not being able to see the long term results. We will all pay a price for this eventually, just like with the olympics, but without the few, very few, benifits we did get from the olympics.

[Anglophone]

I'm sure the businesses would just raise their prices again to take advantage of the 2% HST reduction.