Dear Editor,
Mark Twain wrote that “if you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed” and judging from the latest MLA NDP candidate report regarding the return of the PST, it would seem that he has yet again taken it upon himself to misinform the public about a very important issue!
British Columbia will return to the PST on April 1, 2013 thus meeting the province’s commitment to return to the PST as quickly as possible and demonstrating the government has always been clear that it had a well-defined plan to keep BC on track as it moved towards the reinstatement of the PST. As the Independent Transition Panel indicated, it would take 18-24 months to return to the PST and that the time required would ensure that businesses could plan their training and systems switch-over effectively in order to apply the sales tax correctly.
During the transition process the government announced new relief measures that benefited purchasers and builders of new homes. Purchasers of new secondary or recreational homes, outside of the Greater Vancouver area and priced up to $850,000, would be eligible to claim a provincial grant of up to $42,500 effective April 1, 2012.
In addition, lower-income British Columbians will continue to receive the BC HST credit until the PST is re-implemented and once completed the HST Credit will be replaced by the re-implemented PST credit.
Most important, the PST WILL be reinstated with ALL permanent PST exemptions that were in place prior to the HST!
Let us not forget that the NDP record on taxes has always been to raise them; not lower them. The 1990s saw the NDP increase PST from six per cent to seven per cent and they campaigned in 1991 on no tax increases and then increased them by $2 billion in the first year. Under the NDP, British Columbia had the highest marginal income taxes in Canada.
For the NDP candidate to choose to report differently on the return to the PST or the NDP record is misleading and simply not truthful.
Doug Clovechok
