To the Editor:
The HST Referendum Voters Guide has been produced and distributed to B.C. voters at great expense, and should have been a simple fact sheet. It is not.
The tax dollars the province needs to pay for programs and services does not change because our politicians arbitrarily change the way they collect those taxes and what they call them.
The PST will no longer be collected at the end of the production lines, a change that easily could have been made without involving the federal government by harmonizing the GST with the PST.
Harmonizing the two taxes also serves as a smokescreen while the provincial government transfers a multi-billion dollar tax burden from their corporate buddies onto the backs of low income earners and pensioners who already live in poverty.
That is not only highly regressive, it’s an incredible waste of hard earned tax dollars, and it creates an environment of doom and gloom instead of promoting a spirit of optimism people need to pursue their dreams and aspirations for a more productive and rewarding future.
Carole Taylor was the provincial Liberal finance minister for three years, and she had it right when she flat out rejected the invitation to harmonize for two reasons:
The province would surrender control of the tax base; exemptions, enforcement, and a broader tax policy to Ottawa, and harmonization would mean an unavoidable shift in the tax burden from business to consumers.
By supporting the HST our newly minted Premier Christy Clark is endorsing Gordon Campbell and his Liberal government’s legacy of lying.
I am voting no because I am convinced the HST will be 12 per cent tomorrow and 20 per cent before the next snow flies, and - I want the lying to stop.
Andy Thomsen, Summerland