HST PETITION IS HERE!!!!

[sher]

The HST Petition # IP-2010-002 is now here in Fernie and ready for signatures.
You can sign the petition at NAKED EARTH POTTERY, 702A-3rd avenue tuesdays through saturdays, April 24th – June 30th 2010
You must be a registered voter in the Kootenay East electoral district to sign.

There will be canvassers going door to door as well as organized petition signing rallies.

If anyone is interested in signing up as a canvasser, please register at http://www.fighthst.com or contact Sher Pichler at 250-423-4708

Authorized by Patricia Storey, Financial Agent, 604-800-2461

[admin]

The HST’s bitter pill might be good medicine

Until you live someplace, you can’t get a proper feel for her passions and proclivities.
So, naturally I started paying attention to the debate over the harmonized sales tax.
Coming from Alberta, I naturally sympathized with its opponents — taxes bad! Announced just after an election, when it needed to be discussed in advance, the timing wasn’t merely suspicious. It reeked. Still does.
But it didn’t take long to see the issue was more complicated.
B.C. politics "enjoy" a reputation as harsh and noisy, making it hard to discern mindless rhetoric from fair comment. Many of the HST’s detractors are ordinary people who think it’s a bad idea. Fair enough.
But many of the loudest are the types who think Premier Gordon Campbell lies when he orders lunch. That’s not a knock on the left — they have counterparts on the other side, just as shrill and stupid. It’s a knock on people who don’t know what they’re for, only who they hate.
Assuming the Liberals aren’t evil fat cats lighting cigars with $100 bills, but actually believe this is good policy, I wanted to hear their side. They must think it’s worth it to endure this, because they couldn’t have handled it worse.
If that’s the case, I should ask the smartest person I could find to explain it. So, I looked in the mirror.
Yes, I’m kidding. I asked a friend who can arrange such things who he would recommend. Would a Harvard MBA economist do? Uh … yeah. That would be fine.
Ralph Sultan, the first provincial politician I’ve met with a Harvard MBA, was good enough to call me and explain the benefits of the HST, slowly, using long words only when absolutely necessary. Sultan started by saying, basically, value-added taxes are the future. Most Western countries are moving this way, with the notable exception of the United States. Simpler and cheaper overall, they’re much loved by economists.
Currently, consumers are hit by several layers of provincial sales tax before the product or service appears in front of them, especially in sectors like manufacturing. This accumulates, driving the costs of business up. You’re paying those taxes now, you just aren’t seeing them.
The HST has the benefit of being visible. That I can appreciate.
I asked Sultan how British Columbians can be expected to support what is, to most, a bigger tax on more items.
"Let’s start with jobs," he said. No matter how much this isn’t fun to hear, the companies people work for have to do well, or they either fold or leave. Neither of those is good for the province, and the multi-tiered tax system makes B.C. less attractive to do business in.
Yes, the "annoyance factor" will be there. Some things will be more expensive. But the cost of business will go down, encouraging reinvestment in industries not doing well, such as forestry.
As someone who wasn’t here in the awful 1990s, but pointing and laughing from Alberta (now doing the same in reverse), I can appreciate that, too.
Policy aside, Sultan has been one of his own government’s harshest critics of the timing and delivery. He’s right — the delivery was borderline incompetent, and incomprehensibly slow to muster a response to the storm of opposition.
That doesn’t inspire confidence, which the Opposition MLAs have exploited. As they should.
Sultan made good points, I had to admit. I enjoyed the chance to pick his brain. Too often, we decry politicians for swaying with the polls and playing it safe.
Nothing is irreversible — the Liberals are clearly and openly gambling that by the next election, voters will have seen the benefits and calmed down.
The federal Liberals vowed to repeal the hated GST, but found it made too much sense to keep it. Sultan says it will be the same here — bitter pill, good medicine.
But man, was that timing ever horrible.

macleankay@shaw.ca

[fernielocal101]

Nice post, thanks for clearing up some stuff…..

[edwin]

thanks for having the petion handy for allll us to sign!

[david r gildea]

The HST in my opinion is nothing more than a huge tax grab, pure and simple, the cost of just about everything WILL go up, to argue it will reduce prices is wrong and very misleading.

[admin]

Those of us old enough to remember the introduction of the GST in 1991 can find a warm feeling of nostalgia in today’s political argument over its logical extension, the HST.
No wait, that’s not nostalgia. It’s nausea.

Then-prime minister Brian Mulroney’s “hated” GST was proposed to be nine per cent, then brought in at seven amid a storm of unfocused outrage. It was sure to destroy the country, or whatever was left of it after the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Mulroney handed off to B.C.‚Äôs own Kim Campbell, too late. Jean Chr?©tien‚Äôs Liberals crushed the Progressive Conservatives in 1993, chiefly by promising to replace the GST with a better tax, or a fairer tax, or something. They floated an alternative, aptly named BST, but it was all just a show for the poor dumb folks.

Here’s how dumb Canada was, not even 20 years ago. The GST replaced a 14-per-cent manufacturers’ sales tax that was imposed on our own industries, but not on imports. Then we stood around in our dirt-glazed lumberjack shirts, Molson stubbies in hand, and wondered why were still hewing wood and drawing water for the world.

Now B.C. voters tell pollsters they’re going to give the Kim Campbell treatment to Gordon Campbell, and elect the NDP to keep taxes down. A radio station does person-in-the-street interviews. Two out of three people don’t know what the HST is. The third is against it.

Unlike Chr?©tien, NDP leader Carole James doesn‚Äôt promise to repeal the HST, at least not right away. We‚Äôre stuck with it for five years, she says. The best bet is to stop it now, even though the province can‚Äôt change a federal law.

NDP MLAs have awkwardly joined up with Bill Vander Zalm’s petition drive, in the great tradition of running to the front of the day’s parade. They did it with the carbon tax too. They’ve turned into a reactionary force, confronting a flood of B.C. Liberal innovations, with none of their own.

No one really knows what a successful petition would mean, although the best guess is, not much.

Vander Zalm doesn’t promote an NDP government. That would be a hill too far even for him. He made a career out of fighting Ottawa, over the GST, abortion and French on corn flakes boxes, and this is more of the same.

At anti-HST rallies around the province, Vander Zalm talks openly about a conspiracy to impose global government. Canada’s doing the HST, they’ll talk U.S. President Barack Obama into it, and the next thing you know we’ll be merged with the European Union and B.C.’s tax rate will be set not in Ottawa, but in Brussels.

Vander Zalm says the HST will once again till the soil for a third provincial party, presumably the B.C. Conservatives under his sidekick Chris Delaney. (Chris who? Never mind.)

In 1999, Vander Zalm ran for the fledgling Reform B.C. in a Delta South by-election and was trounced by Val Roddick. He entered politics in the 1970s claiming to be both a federal and provincial Liberal, presumably because that was the vehicle he found with the keys in it.

Here’s the central reason that B.C. in 2010 needs to move to a consumption tax. The baby boomers are retiring. There won’t be enough people paying income tax to support them. This is not a prediction. As the engineer aboard the Titanic said, it is a mathematical certainty.

You might want to check the rising water before you sign a petition.

Tom Fletcher is legislative reporter and columnist for Black Press and BCLocalnews.com.

tfletcher@blackpress.ca

[edwin]

tiger
you’re a LOON
you actually WANT a tax?
i am dumbfounded……..what planet?
what do you think of earth?

[david r gildea]

For your information, here is a copy of the email I sent to Mr Fletcher of Black Press regarding "Lemmings". " I take offence to your article Sir, I am a small businessman who’s customers will pay a lot more in taxes because of this stupid tax, just because you are in the pocket of the liberals does not mean that I am, I have never voted NDP for your information but I will tell you this, the liberals and apparently you are underestimating this anti-government movement".

[mikes]

I like driving on paved roads! Yo want injection sites? Where’s the $ come from? Provincial parks? Everyone wants to bath in the land of milk and honey, but nobody wants to pay for it.

[david r gildea]

Mikes writes " nobody wants to pay for it", sorry ? we allready pay approximately 47% of our income in taxes each year, thats darn nearly half of what we earn !!! and you want to pay more ?? there are a lot of ways for the goverment to save money starting with not giving themselves 39% pay increases and now refusing to identify perks etc that they get.
I know you are just trying to wind things up Mikes but try and show some commonsense, remember the old proverb about killing the golden goose, you can only keep overtaxing people for so long before it does drive the economy underground.
If the ordinary small business ran like government does then as we need more money we would just keep raising prices, where would it end, we have to be competitve, government does not, it beleives it has a never ending money source, TAXES, and like well behaved sheep we keep going along with them, never trying to fight back, this petition is the chance to fight back.

[mikes]

Schools shut down, hospitals shut down, funding gets cut from childrens programs, if you want more, shouldn’t we pay more? 90% of Canadian pay more why shouldn’t we? I’ve decieded I won’t be signing the l
petition, and you’ve decided you will, of course we’re going to try to convince other people to do what we’re going to do. You’ve misinterpreted my motives. I’m only stirring the pot after you thow in your ingredients. Stop throwing yours in, and I won’t have to stir it.

[admin]

Four out of five British Columbians in a recent survey expressed a willingness to sign the petition to repeal the harmonized sales tax. Many groups and opposition parties have cited deficiencies of the impending sales tax reform. But in failing to propose any alternative to the HST, they have accepted the notion that British Columbia’s existing retail sales tax is a relatively desirable tax.

After all their publicly bandied criticism of the HST — much of it misinformed and misconceived — opponents of this tax reform need to justify retention of the PST. It’s time for the public spotlight to be turned from the HST to the PST. In fact, B.C.’s PST is seriously flawed and economically damaging, and whatever its potential shortcomings, the HST will be superior in almost every respect.

A common adage is that "an old tax is a good tax." B.C.’s PST is not only an old tax but an antiquated and outmoded tax. The format is used in only five Canadian provinces (just three after Ontario and B.C. replace their sales taxes mid-year) and 45 of the 50 U.S. states. Almost every other country has long since abandoned retail sales taxes and adopted a value-added tax format like Canada’s GST.

Moreover, no country besides Canada simultaneously employs two such divergent forms of sales tax at the national and sub-national levels. Retention of the PST in B.C. would leave the province’s businesses with an unnecessary $150 million of tax compliance costs each year, which push up product prices for all consumers. Retaining the PST would also leave the provincial government burdened with annual costs of $30 million for administration plus $50 million for vendor compensation.

These operational costs will be eliminated with the move to an HST, thus helping to preserve public services and/or resist pressures for tax hikes. In addition, repealing the HST would deprive the B.C. treasury of $1.6 billion in federal transfers made to facilitate harmonization. Opponents of the HST have not told us how they would make up those lost revenues: raise taxes (and which ones) or cut public spending (and on which services)?

Even worse than these financial impacts of repealing the HST, keeping the PST would continue to act as a drag on B.C. economic prosperity. B.C. has one of the weakest records among Canadian provinces in growth of investment, productivity, and wages, which research studies link to the PST burden on businesses. Nearly 40 per cent of the $5 billion in annual PST revenues falls directly on business rather than consumers.

Non-partisan panels of economic experts have identified provincial retail sales taxes as one of the most damaging public policies in terms of productivity growth. In this context, harmonization’s estimated onetime impact on the consumer price level of 0.7 of one per cent will be a bargain in return for many years of increased growth in jobs and real wages. How many HST opponents would turn down this exchange if they understood it?

The existing PST imposes a heavier burden on the poor and near-poor than the impending HST with its companion refundable tax credits. For example, a childless couple with income of $30,000 (above the poverty line) will gain by a couple of hundred dollars per year after netting their HST tax credits against their slightly higher living costs.

In contrast, retaining the PST will continue to impose large but hidden tax burdens not only on the poor but on all consumers. The $1.9 billion in PST paid directly by businesses gets built into the competitive prices that they must charge consumers.

As a consequence of these embedded business taxes, products that are nominally tax-exempt under the PST actually bear positive effective tax rates. All goods and services now carrying a seven per cent rate of PST have effective tax rates exceeding seven per cent. With the shift to the HST, these embedded taxes will disappear through rebates to businesses for the taxes they pay on their inputs, so that B.C.’s tax rate will be a true and uniform seven per cent for consumers.

Apparently, HST opponents prefer to pay their taxes in hidden, covert ways rather than in the highly visible manner of a value-added tax. B.C.’s move to harmonize its sales tax with the federal GST provokes the same misunderstandings and opposition as arose with the 1991 shift of the hidden federal manufacturers’ sales tax to the highly visible GST.

By Jon Kesselman, Vancouver Sun

[mikes]

That’s just it, people are saying "I pay enough tax already, I shouldn’t have to pay more." meanwhile they are already paying the tax, but the kicker is it’s hidden and they don’t even know it. For example, going to a restaurant, currently we’re only paying 1 tax, but guess what, the restaurants are paying both taxes on all he ingredients. And guess how they’re paying for the PST? By hiding it in the cost of the food you ordered. You’re paying the PST right now but it’s hidden in the cost of the food when you pay. So when people say you’ll be paying more, you already are paying more and you don’t even know it…. It’s "hidden"

[david r gildea]

Here I go chucking in the ingredeints again Mikes !!!! So what you are saying is, using your resturant example, that menu prices will now go down all across the province, bar meals probably too because the "Hidden" tax will no longer be paid, well if you beleive that, it is unfair to use resturants as the single example though, in one of the postings by a proffessional journalist, he is saying the government will save millions from not compensating business, OH, so who pray tell is going to now compensate business for collecting the taxes, or is it just going to be a cost of doing business ? wonder who will end up paying that cost AND it will be subject to HST.

[fernielocal101]

I only wish the government would at least cuddle with me after they screw me…. Or maybe at least whisper some sweet nothings in my ear, that way I can at least convince myself they really love me… and it’s all for the greater good… and they will be there for me when I need them…

I sure love paved roads, I like that when I call an ambulance or police they actually come, I like public education and government programs to help people in horrible situations…

I’m not so fond of my loser uncle who has been riding welfare for as long as I can remember… complaining about some phantom back problem and blaming his pure incompetence on “them”… while drinking a $52 case of beer and smoking a $12 pack of cigarettes… Can you believe we pay for that fat SOB to do that… every time I smell I him or people like him I just want to smash their faces, spill their beer and crush their cigarettes… then it would only cost more I guess…

Oh ya, and I love his $1,200 TV, full cable package… the laptop and the internet…. that way he has something to do all day…

I also don’t like paying taxes so they can spend money to see where we are spending money to decide how to spend the money….
They need to run it more like a business…
All in all I don’t mind paying for my lifestyle… It’s a good one…

[imported_ryland]

so.. big government and all there lemming supporters say that the HST will SAVE us money.

Well here’s the test. RCR (proud BC liberal supporter) should tow the party line and reduce their prices…… there saving so much money by not paying any PST… so they will pass those savings on to the consumers. Right? thats the pro HST story. Will it ring true?

If it doesn’t, we know that HST is a scam (not that we don’t already)

[mikes]

Wow Ryland, sounds like you are actually starting to understand the HST, you’ve leaned so much in two weeks. Don’t come round my place trying to get me to sign though. I’ll have to release the hounds…….

[imported_ryland]

well mikes. if you wouldn’t be so scared about revealing who you really are I (and many others) would stay away from your house. But you wouldn’t want to have people actually knowing that this is you blabbing your face all over the internet would you…

[mikes]

Mikes west fernie, see you here.

[toque]

"For example, going to a restaurant, currently we’re only paying 1 tax, but guess what, the restaurants are paying both taxes on all he ingredients. And guess how they’re paying for the PST? By hiding it in the cost of the food you ordered. You’re paying the PST right now but it’s hidden in the cost of the food when you pay. So when people say you’ll be paying more, you already are paying more and you don’t even know it…. It’s "hidden"

Mikes, food is not taxed on a provincial or federal level, this is a bad example. I own a restaurant and this example is misinformation. I my case the tax may hurt my business. Consumers do not have to pay PST or GST on food when they purchase it at a grocerie store. When the HST comes into effect consumers will have to pay an additional 12% for the pleasure of having someone else cook their food. The cost of my goods will not go down hence neither can my prices. I may get a marginal return on paper goods and cleaning supplies but not much.

[imported_ryland]

if you are interested you can host the petition at the toque too. sign up as a canvasser at http://www.fighthst.com or go see Sher at naked earth pottery.

and now for a message from former premier and leader of the Fight HST petition – Bill Vanderzalm:

Despite the government’s attempts to make it seem like the HST is a done deal, nothing could be further from the truth (I know – you’re shocked to hear this government may not be telling the truth again)

They said the HST was a done deal when they signed the agreement with Ottawa nine months ago. Then they said it was a done deal in December when Ottawa passed the federal legislation in Parliament. Now, they’re saying it is a done deal with the legislation removing the PST this past week.

But what can be enacted by government, can be repealed. We have known that part of their ‘trick’ was to spread out the passage of this new tax as long as they could to try to thwart your efforts to stop it – that is why our petition is to REPEAL the HST. The bill you are signing when you sign the anti-HST Initiative petition is to cancel the HST Agreement BC signed with Ottawa last year.

By successfully completing the Initiative petition, we will be forcing the government to either vote to cancel the HST Agreement, thereby repealing the HST, or put the question to a province wide referendum.

And just so you know, the HST was implemented in Saskatchewan in 1989, and two years after it was in effect, it was REPEALED by a new government, and the provincial sales tax reinstated. It’s not rocket science – its called democracy. And the HST is not a “done deal” until the people decide it is.

85% of British Columbians in poll after poll have said they reject this tax. The Citizen Initiative is our only chance to stop it.

Nothing has changed. Our strategy to defeat this hated tax remains the same – complete the first successful petition in BC and Canadian history, and force the government to rescind this hated sales tax. If they vote against the people’s wishes as expressed in the legislation presented to them – then we will begin Phase II of our plan – RECALL.

Some have said it will only take the recall of 7 MLAs to bring down the government. We believe it may take the recall of only one MLA to stop this government – the premier himself. But that decision is up to Premier Campbell. He can prevent his own Recall by listening to the people, and repealing his hated tax.

Our Citizen Initiative petition will give him that chance. And even though we have already gathered over 50% of the signatures required to complete the petition in only 3 weeks, we still need to finish the job.

Don’t let this gang of undemocratic frauds take away your vote. We need to keep getting signatures for the petition until we have achieved the 15% threshold in every riding.

This has become about much more than simply defeating a Hated Sales Tax. It is a battle of the people vs. their own government.

And there can only be one winner if democracy in BC is to survive.

We are going to be that winner.

Thank you and God bless,
Bill Vander Zalm
Leader, Fight HST

[mikes]

Touque, why won’t you be passing on your marginal return on paper goods and cleaning supplies to the consumer?

http://www.hstincanada.com/2010/04/can- … staurants/

[toque]

Mikes I will in promotional meals to my regular clientelle.

[mikes]

Well, your the one running he resturaunt, and if you say HST is bad for business, then I should be more willing to listen to you.

[imported_ryland]

yes you should….

but would you?

[mikes]

I can listen without agreeing, you should try it. Bah bah black sheep have you any wool? I feel like I do listen after all I don’t have family members that can ban you or shut down a forum because I don’t want to listen to you any more. The personal message was a nice touch!

[imported_ryland]

dude. I have no idea what your talking about with my family members shutting down forums and banning people.. i doubt they even have forum accounts.

I have no idea who you are. And this shows just how little you know about me. I doubt we have even met. (but I wouldn’t know because you won’t even take me up on my offer to buy you a beer)

so.. leave my family out of whatever vendetta you have against me. They have nothing to do with whatever your problems are that you seem to have with me.

[admin]

On July 1, the cost of becoming more productive and competitive will fall significantly in B.C. and Ontario, as the harmonized sales tax replaces the provincial sales tax.
The PST directly adds to the cost of machinery, equipment and the technology we need to invest in if our businesses are to become productive enough to survive in global market.

The new tax — the HST — can be deducted from the tax collected when the firm sells its final output.
Not only will this save our industries billions of dollars, but it will also go a long way to helping us deal with a strong dollar and improve our economy and our lives.
Canadians think we are at least as good as Americans, if not better. We are more polite than they are. We say please and thank you more often. We don’t carry arms. And Canadian citizens, if not always Canadian teams, play the best hockey.

There are also many similarities: We speak the same language as our U.S. neighbours, shop in similar malls, live in the same kinds of houses and hold the same kinds of jobs. Moving south of the 49th parallel is not nearly as big a change for Canadians as moving to Asia, Africa or even South America or Europe.
But there are some important areas where we are not keeping up with the Americans. In fact, now that our currency is at par, they are eating our lunch.
When Americans go to work, they turn out more goods and services each hour than do Canadians — they are more productive. American output per hour worked has been higher than Canadian productivity over the lifetimes of most Canadians.

And the difference is growing as U.S. productivity improves faster than ours. In the last quarter of 2009, Canadian productivity grew a mere 1.4 per cent, while the U.S. surged ahead 6.9 per cent.

Producing less means earning less, and this hurts our standard of living. As long as those who bought what we produced could pay in 65-cent dollars, we only noticed how poor we were when we traveled out of the country.

Now, with our dollar equal to the U.S.’s, our goods and services are more expensive to the rest of the world. We have trouble competing and lose export sales and jobs.
If we want a better life for ourselves and our children, we need to become more productive. But we don’t do that by toiling like slaves. Instead, we need the tools that enable us to generate more output for each hour worked.

I’m referring to the machinery, equipment and technology that increase output without increasing effort.
A recent report from Statistics Canada shows we are moving in the wrong direction. Instead of helping us stay competitive by adding machinery and equipment, Canada had a record level drop in this kind of investment during the last recession.

In the short run, this had a small benefit: Companies that were not spending on improving productivity could afford to keep more workers on and minimize unemployment.
In the long run, not investing in the tools that will increase productivity is like not giving your child needed medical treatment because it will hurt. Less productive companies may end up with all their workers becoming unemployed as they lose their customers to more productive producers.
There are many things we can do to improve our economy and our job base. We can undertake research and apply new, innovative ideas. We can add human capital, training workers at all levels.

But the fastest and most immediate thing we can do is to apply more of the machinery, equipment and technology that already exists. By reducing the cost of investment for companies, the HST will make it easier for us to do this.

Roslyn Kunin is director of the B.C. office(of the Canada West Foundation)
Trail Daily Times

[imported_ryland]

15% and counting! Lets push for 50% folks!

http://www.thefreepress.ca/article/2010 … ast-voters

[admin]

Nine hundred East Kootenay voters have signed the anti-HST petition to date – meaning organizers have reached their 15 per cent target.

According to the Fight HST Campaign in Kootenay East, over 900 signatures have been collected.

As The Free Press went to print there was no break down available of numbers across each community in the riding.

To be successful, the petition must gather signatures from 10 per cent of voters in each riding across B.C. by July 5.

The Liberal government could then be required to hold a referendum on its decision to link the seven per cent B.C. tax and five per cent federal tax into a single 12 per cent value added tax.

Petition canvasser Sharon Cross said: “There have only been a few people that have not really been interested. This is a huge issue that affects everybody in the province, and so far the results have been overwhelmingly positive.”

“What we are hearing from people is that they are angry with the government on this issue, since they stated they would not bring in the HST” said Cross.

Kootenay East MLA Bill Bennett told The Free Press this week: “I’m not surprised – I expected them to be able to find 10 per cent of the voters who would say no to a new tax.

“I think it is an important message that I personally need to think about and respect.

“I think the government and myself have to accept responsibility for the really poor job we have done in terms of announcing the tax and communicating its benefits to the province. I don’t think we’ve done a good job in that regard.”

“I get that people don’t like the new tax, I get that people don’t like the fact consumers will pay seven per cent on some items that wasn’t there before, and I respect that, but however we have brought in over 100 tax cuts in the last nine years, you will pay more tax anywhere else in the country except Alberta, and they aren’t so far from us anymore.”

• What questions do you have about the HST? We will pose them to local tax experts, the anti-HST canvassers and the provincial government on your behalf. Email questions to freepress@shawcable.com or call 250-423-4666.

[mikes]

I bet if they wanted to, they would also be able to find 15% of voters that didn’t want to pay income tax. or any tax for that matter.

[admin]

On July 1, B.C. and Ontario will merge their provincial sales tax (PST) with the federal Goods and Services Tax (GST) creating a single harmonized sales tax (HST) — 12% in B.C. and 13% in Ontario. Unfortunately, the prospect of harmonization has been met with public discontent due to misinformation being spread by those who oppose the reform and want to derail it. Canadians mustn’t believe the anti-HST hype. The economic case for the HST is ironclad.

To understand why the move to an HST is beneficial, it is important to highlight the problem with the PST: It applies to business inputs in addition to many of the goods and services that consumers buy. When businesses are charged PST on production supplies and capital inputs such as machinery, production costs increase and these increased costs are largely passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. In many cases, a product can be taxed multiple times before it is taxed one last time when purchased by the final consumer.

Even goods and services that are currently exempt from the PST in both provinces contain embedded PST, since service providers pay PST on many inputs they purchase including machinery, computers, office equipment and supplies.

The HST, on the other hand, is a “value added tax” like the federal GST: Only the value added by the business selling the good or service is taxed. In other words, all business inputs are exempt from the HST. Under the HST, businesses will receive refunds for the sales tax they pay on inputs.

Past experience with harmonization in Canada shows that competitive pressures will cause businesses to largely pass these savings on to consumers through lower prices.

In 1997, Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia harmonized their PST with the federal GST. University of Toronto professor Michael Smart examined the effects and found that overall consumer prices in the harmonizing provinces actually fell after the 1997 reforms.

Harmonization will not only reduce prices, but also the costs of business investment. Since the PST applies to business inputs, including much of the machinery and technology firms purchase, it discourages business investment. By eliminating the PST on inputs, the HST will spark more business investment and development.

Here again past experience with sales tax harmonization in Canada is telling. After the three Atlantic provinces harmonized their PST with the federal GST in 1997, professor Smart found that investment in machinery and equipment rose by more than 12% in these provinces compared to the non-harmonized provinces.

With more investment and business development, British Columbians and Ontarians stand to gain higher wages and more job opportunities. For instance, University of Calgary professor Jack Mintz estimates that harmonization will account for a net increase of 113,000 and 591,000 jobs in B.C. and Ontario, respectively, over 10 years.

Finally, Canada’s competitiveness will be improved with B.C. and Ontario’s move to an HST, since businesses that export goods will see their prices become more competitive relative to businesses operating in other provinces and countries without sales taxes on inputs. Improving Ontario’s competitiveness is especially important given the blow to the manufacturing sector from the recent recession.

To recoup the lost revenue from refunding the tax paid on business inputs, the HST will apply to a wider array of goods and services than the PST. Broadening the tax base this way ensures that more goods and services will be treated fairly, meaning the HST will produce a more uniform tax burden on all forms of consumption of goods and services.

Opponents of harmonization claim that the elimination of sales taxes on business inputs and the expansion of the sales tax base would result in a shift of the tax burden from business to individuals. However, such a view ignores that the ultimate burden of all taxes falls on people in the form of higher prices, lower wages, or reduced rates of return.

Moreover, both B.C. and Ontario are implementing several initiatives concurrently with the HST to offset the total additional amount of sales tax paid. This makes harmonization revenue neutral for government.

British Columbians and Ontarians would do well to ignore the anti-HST rhetoric. The HST is a significantly more efficient sales tax system that will improve the investment climates in both provinces and ultimately benefit Canadians through more opportunities, higher rates of economic growth and increased prosperity. The three remaining non-harmonized provinces, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Prince Edward Island, should follow suit.

Niels Veldhuis and Charles Lammam are economists at the Fraser Institute. From the National Post

[mtnrat]

The more I look into this the more I find that the petitioners are fear mongering. I do not agree with the way the HST was rolled out by the Provincial Government. It was cowardly. That does not change the fact that It will be good for the economy. If it is carried through I will be able to hire one and maybe two full time employees in the $25 to $35 per hour range and I only have a small company of 5 employees. The HST makes that much difference to my small company.There are some things that will cost more, but the big picture of the economics of the province need to be taken into account, rather than dwell on the minutia.

[edwin]

what a crazy contrast
mtn rat is gonna hire….and some ppl may not be able to afford to live in BC any longer post-hst.
so it’s gonna benifit only business owners who are the minority of the pop. ?
nice

[mtnrat]

edwin wrote :
> what a crazy contrast
> mtn rat is gonna hire….and some ppl may not be able to afford to live in
> BC any longer post-hst.
> so it’s gonna benifit only business owners who are the minority of the pop.
> ?
> nice

Excellent observation , but I will give a couple of jobs so people CAN live in BC

[Author]

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