Editor: Even though we now have a decision from the voters of B.C. to scrap the HST, I wonder when or if we will ever hear any straight talk from our government about the tax burden on individual citizens. It seems there were two main reasons that the HST was defeated — first, because the electorate was extremely angry at the duplicitous methods used to bring it in, in the first place, and second, because we saw the shift of so much more of the tax burden on to the individual and less on the corporate entities.
When the government was trying to sell the HST last year, they promised prices would drop on goods, offsetting the tax increases.
Talk about pricing reductions was noticeably absent during the government’s recent ridiculously-biased campaign around the referendum — because of course those reductions never happened in the year we have been paying the additional taxes.
So now I expect the provincial government is going to blame all of its financial woes on the loss of the HST, and use that as an excuse to attack public sector workers, to cut services to citizens, and to defend their ever-increasing deficits.
It is long past time for an honest discussion in our province about the cost of the social services we so value, and an equitable means of paying for them. Adding consumption taxes to everything the government can tie into creates an imbalance that means the average income earner is paying a much greater share, relative to income, of the overall burden than high earners and corporations. It doesn’t make sense in our economy, and is not what the electorate has asked for.
We have seen a decade of cuts to services in the midst of a good economy and yet an ever-increasing deficit. I thought these guys told us they could manage the economy — or is it just that they can manage the economy to benefit their friends, at the expense of the average taxpayer?
Michelle Laurie,
Langley
