BC Liberals Try To Top California
If you’ve ever spent any time in Vancouver, you’ll appreciate how much we love consumption and environmental taxes.
I have been spending a week or two each month in Southern California, and when I compare it to BC, it’s really not that bad down there. Food, beer, gas.. are about half. Income tax is less than BC. Homes are now the same price.
In BC, we tax drinks at restaurants even though the cost is almost completely made up of taxes, have a special tax on weed killer, charge enviro fees plus deposit on bottled drinks, have disposal fees (tax) on electronics, tax home purchases because of the the transfer of land under the Property Transfer Tax (which is a hideous tax ), carbon tax all our energy needs (that’s set to rise)… and the list goes on (although there isn’t a complete list I can find anywhere).
Our taxes would make a Roman blush.
Now under the Harmonized Sales Tax scheme, and BC getting a bribe to go along with it, they are allowed to understate a deficit that beats California’s, per capita. This on the heels an election where they forgot to mention it (or outright lied).
The deficit of $2.8 billion would have been 4.2 billion if Victoria had not accepted a $1.6 billion bribe to harmonize the sales tax to a staggering 12% on an expanded list of everything that GST is charged on… and more. Even used cars now will get a new tax making them even more out of line than they already are.
A sane politician might to start looking at cutting runaway spending.
To add insult to injury, MLA John Slater said that the public will come around to it.
Once citizens start to understand all the details, they will accept it, he predicted. But Slater concedes that the public has not reacted well to the HST. “We’re getting lots of emails, we are getting lots of phone calls, we are getting a lot of concerns,” he said, adding that even his supporters have expressed their dissatisfaction. “Unfortunately, we didn’t have the time to market it before implementing it,” said Slater.
Citizens, he said, can adjust how much HST they pay.
“This (the HST) is a strictly consumptive tax,” he said.
Fair enough – than cut income taxes across the board, directly proportional to the new money you’ll be pickpocketing us for. Maybe think of cutting small business taxes before they are crippled by the HST.
You may even see see consumption stop it’s free fall because of the tax policies of your government.
It may even be sellable (or forgettable in Liberal terms) to us tax-loving consumers.
Anything short of this means a new government next election. (Or sooner.)
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:06 am
You will not change your government nor will you change the tax. Canadians have never seen a tax they would not pay. Socialism requires that you take from the people who produce until they will produce no more. You then have the option of making them true slaves to the unproductive ie all levels of government or the system self destructs.