Editor:
It seems Kevin Falcon cannot tell the truth about the HST, even if his life depended on it. He continues to repeat the deception that a 10% tax is better than a 12% tax. This is only true for comparisons between his ‘old’ HST tax rate and his ‘new’ (“I hope they buy this”) HST tax rate.
Voters should not fall for this slick, political trick that was designed to catch the naive. “A 10% tax rate is lower than a 12% tax rate” would be true if the PST and HST were applied to the identical fraction of the economy. But the government’s bean-counters know that the HST applies to a much greater part of the B.C. economy since, unlike PST, it also taxes services, which are now the largest part of every modern society.
As a result, 5% HST pulls in much more than 7% PST. All this extra cash comes from the pockets of consumers and allows “The Friends of Big Biz” (also known as the Liberal Government of B.C.) to drastically reduce income taxes and resource royalty rates to the largest corporations operating in B.C. This was always the secret agenda behind the HST – it’s not about accounting or sales taxes.
It’s easy math: an extra $2,400 million in taxes to be collected from about 2 million B.C. families means each average family has to provide an extra $1,200 per year in sales taxes to the giant corporations, who fund the BC Liberals to stay in government.
Dr. Herbert Spencer, Aldergrove
