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The most pressing issue in BC is certainly not the HST. But heh, its a great diversion while Campbell guts health care, proceeds with oil and gas drilling at an accelerated rate, cuts student assistance programs, cuts grants to libraries and cultural groups and is actively ensuring their corruption trial will never get to trail.
Lets have teabag parties to really show them. The Howe street cabal gets a tax break and the citizens have something minor to divert their attention from the real issues. A perfect storm.
The most pressing issue in BC is certainly not the HST. But heh, its a great diversion while Campbell guts health care, proceeds with oil and gas drilling at an accelerated rate, cuts student assistance programs, cuts grants to libraries and cultural groups and is actively ensuring their corruption trial will never get to trail.
Lets have teabag parties to really show them. The Howe street cabal gets a tax break and the citizens have something minor to divert their attention from the real issues. A perfect storm.
I have had the same growing feeling, Krop. On my Facebook I have watched while 10s of thousands sign on against the HST while a petition asking that BC reinstate funding for necessary equipment required by a disabled child struggles to obtain 200. I will same it is a transparent and simple example of how Gordo lied in the election campaign, but it seems that the failed commitment to protect health care and education is equally obvious. The difference seems to be the hysteria over HST by some in the MSM that campaigned so openly for the Libs in the election. Given a choice between saving a skill hill's profit margin and helping a disabled child, I think I know which I consider more important.
We know that the NDP are opposed to this harmonization of taxes but what is the the position of the new NDP government in Nova Scotia - yes they did inherit it but would have opposed it in opposition - are they planning on opting out now or have they come to the conclusion that the regular revenue stream from such a tax actually will help them implement their progressive programs.
Also does anyone know how the lower income Atlantic earners were helped when this tax came in there - is there a quarterly GST type rebate sent out every four months like proposed here in BC.
Munroe - I agree somewhat with you - to me there are more pressing needs in the province - I have been away but wasn't the petition started by a certain NDP back room hack, media mouth and consultant who's fees will now be subject to the full HST and wasn't this the same hack who opposed electoral reform.
If the people in Sweden pay a VAT of 25% on just about everything including on restaurants meals as well as income tax and higher fuel tax than us here just how do they live the standard of living that they have - could it be that the government is able to use the VAT to pay for those who need support programs.
Munroe - I agree somewhat with you - to me there are more pressing needs in the province - I have been away but wasn't the petition started by a certain NDP back room hack, media mouth and consultant who's fees will now be subject to the full HST and wasn't this the same hack who opposed electoral reform.
If the people in Sweden pay a VAT of 25% on just about everything including on restaurants meals as well as income tax and higher fuel tax than us here just how do they live the standard of living that they have - could it be that the government is able to use the VAT to pay for those who need support programs.
Three points, Politics. Bill T does not have a petition, rather it is a FB group; the petition is the NDPs. Secondly, I would argue the explosion of concern is not thanks to BT or the NDP; it is stoked by the blaring headlines in the various newspapers and on organs like CKNW and the televison news stations. The points seem to focus on the effect on certain small business groups and developers. In other words it is not an issue of fairness but just another "taxes are bad" story. Finally, the intent appears to simply transfer a tax revenue source from certain large corporate entities to consumers. Whether Sweden has a VAT or not (the "socail wage" in the form of services in far higher), consumption taxes are inherently regressive as compared to a progressive income tax system. Take the gas tax - the con job of revenue neutrality is a tax shift away from income and corporate taxes. It is a case in point in many ways. Business received a big cut whether or not their fuel costs increased proportionately but has anyone notice cheaper goods as a result? When a tax increases business cries it must "flow through", but decreases never do strangely (check out private liquor store prices for another example).
All of this said, the very real declines in social welfare, health and education funding and various other government programmes are of greater consequence to many more then this tax shift. In this way, Krop is absolutely correct.
Case in point:
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/BC-Politics/2009/07/17/BCChildWelfareBroken/
The child welfare system is broken and in crisis according to a recent report by the BC Association of Social Workers.
I checked the Sun and CKNW archives are it appears neither even reported on this.
munroe, higher sales taxes are not going to give us better health care. Although the Liberals would love people to believe that talking point.
In this case, the higher sales tax means lower business taxes. Period. That isn't going to help the environment, support health care, alleviate child poverty or anything else.
Just like the carbon tax, the NDP should "axe the tax".
... and sometimes you just gotta ride the populist wave.
That said, the HST and Carbon Tax are part of an overall shift towards taxing consumption over income (corporate and personal). The reasoning is simple 1) it will reduce the tax burden on business and corporations 2) It is easy to sell. The Liberals are already hinting at income tax cuts to match any increase in revenue, in order to make it "revenue neutral". This will work over the long run since most common folk understand the reasons for taxes but still feel burned having to pay it when earned and when spent. I believe lots say, " Tax me at one end not both." The Liberals will grant them that wish, slowly.
This will also help to continue to paint Premier Campbell as a centrist. The NDP attacks from the left and Vander Zalm and the crazy conservtives from the right. It's BS but most PR is ...
munroe, higher sales taxes are not going to give us better health care. Although the Liberals would love people to believe that talking point.
In this case, the higher sales tax means lower business taxes. Period. That isn't going to help the environment, support health care, alleviate child poverty or anything else.
Not sure how you came to to the conclusion that I might ever be under the illusion that a higher regressive tax could lead to better health care when it is advertised as a simple transfer of the burden from corporations (revenue neutral). The problem, IMO, is that it is not the central battle here and the nature of the "tax revolt" should not be misunderstood.
... and sometimes you just gotta ride the populist wave.
That said, the HST and Carbon Tax are part of an overall shift towards taxing consumption over income (corporate and personal). The reasoning is simple 1) it will reduce the tax burden on business and corporations 2) It is easy to sell. The Liberals are already hinting at income tax cuts to match any increase in revenue, in order to make it "revenue neutral". This will work over the long run since most common folk understand the reasons for taxes but still feel burned having to pay it when earned and when spent. I believe lots say, " Tax me at one end not both." The Liberals will grant them that wish, slowly.
This will also help to continue to paint Premier Campbell as a centrist. The NDP attacks from the left and Vander Zalm and the crazy conservtives from the right. It's BS but most PR is ...
Exactly ....
We know that the NDP are opposed to this harmonization of taxes but what is the the position of the new NDP government in Nova Scotia - yes they did inherit it but would have opposed it in opposition - are they planning on opting out now or have they come to the conclusion that the regular revenue stream from such a tax actually will help them implement their progressive programs.
I can't say anything about Nova Scotia, but there was an interesting article in the Winnipeg Free Press the other day about the possibilities for Manitoba. I started a thread on it a few minutes ago.
http://rabble.ca/babble/prairies/hst-manitoba-next
Nordic style consumption taxes ... work well in Nordic countries like Sweden where highly competitive macroeconomic conditions are the rule. That's not Canada. Our's is a hewer and drawer of natural resources, and dwindling crude oil and gas reserves. Lowering corporate taxes on those mainly American and foreign owned and controlled energy reserves actually goes against the grain of Nordic style competitive economies and resource nationalism. Dont trust the Liberals to create a highly competitive Nordic style economy if that's what people are thinking. Because the Liberals will get the corporate tax cuts a-okay. It's everything else they have no clue about or intention of doing.
The Liberals deserve the backlash for trying to be underhanded and announce this two months after the elections and on holidays, I only wish it had happened before the BC-STV referendum as it would have certainly helped!
There are going to be $230 quarterly rebates per person for low income families -- but shhh...
The big issue is the lock down on exemptions for future governments. The MOA gives BC 1.6 billion, but essentially bans future POS exemptions. So even if a future government wanted to remove the HST or exempt an item, they would have to repay the 1.6 billion to the federal coffers..
That's typical. They'll screw us over the long run and make it look like a plus. Weasels!
B.C. is proposing to provide a B.C. HST Credit that would be provided, on a refundable basis along with the quarterly GST Credit payments. The maximum amount of the credit would be $230 for individuals with income up to $20,000, and $230 per family member for families with incomes up to $25,000. The maximum credit would be phased-out by four per cent of income above the thresholds. The credit will benefit over 1.1 million British Columbians, and when combined with the existing low income Climate Action credit, a single individual earning $20,000 will be eligible for up to $333 in credits.
So essentially, if you are make less than $20K, and spend under $1000 a month in previously exempt items, you come out ahead. If you make over 20K, tough luck.
If at a later point, some future government wants to remove the HST, they essentially would have to repay 1.6 billion and cancel the quarterly tax credit.
You support the HST ... grain of salt please.
The family practise Drs here in BC have came out against this tax as well.
Drip drip drip
http://www.hstinbc.ca/
The report put out by these guys predicts rainbows and gum drops and nothing but.
What's the deal? The people involved really don't sound that "independent" to me. CEO of a bank and Simon Fraser economist ... etc...
Please call Elections BC at 1-800-661-8683 to get registered right away(click on image to see)
In order to be eligible to vote you must be a registered voter. If you are not registered, you will not be mailed a referendum ballot. According to a 2009 Elections BC study, nearly one in five British Columbians are not registered to vote. That means, close to 700,000 citizens may not be able to cast a ballot in the HST referendum. Please make sure you don’t miss your chance to vote YES to scrap this unfair tax. To find out if you are eligible to vote in the HST referendum, please complete the form on the right and press submit. Our voter verification system will check to see if you are on the current Elections BC voters’ list. The deadline for registering to vote in the HST Referendum is midnight on July 22.They have extended the HST voting deadline to August 8th or something like that, because of the postal strike. Mine has been sent in already though as we got them before the strike started.
quote: It means voters now have until Aug. 5 to get their ballots back to Elections BC, instead of July 22.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/06/30/bc-hst-p...
The Yes side has won the referendum!
Alright! Good work folks!
If you or your family are "low income" enough to qualify for the entire HST rebate cheque you just lost around $50 per month.
"Good work folks!"
Is this really going to cost the province $3 billion or is that a right-wing scare tactic too?
..the hst vote.
http://electionsbcenr.blob.core.windows.net/electionsbcenr/REF-2011-001....
First of all the HST is not progressive. The HST was gussied up with all sorts of propoganda to make it more progressive, but it's not progressive. I could be convinced that it's a good idea to have a single sales tax, but initially including all sorts of necessities in it that weren't taxed under PST clearly indicated this was yet another way to shift the tax burden to lower income people.
Besides, by definition, consumption taxes aren't nearly as progressive as income/corporate taxes. Lower income people need to spend a higher portion of their income on consumption than higher income people simply to live, hence if you raise consumption taxes you are hurting their ability to spend. We ought to be raising taxes on higher income individuals and corporations so as to raise revenue. Because yes obviously we need more revenue. So while I don't applaud rejecting taxes out of principle, I applaud the rejection of this regressive tax. Not to mention all the propoganda and dirty tricks (vote yes to get rid of the tax?!?, in addition to the official government and non-official propoganda in favour of the HST) used to try to get people to keep the HST shows that this is a strong rebuke to the Liberals.
As for the feds wanting "their" 1.6 billion back, LOL. BC contributes more to equalization than we get back, so that money they used to try to bribe us and if they want to "punish" us by all means. It's really our money anyways so let them.
Just as an aside it's interesting to take a look at the riding by riding results. Some of the strongest pro-HST ridings were on the high-income suburbs of Vancouver, Vancouver's West Side and a few other out posts like Oak Bay, Kelowna, south Kelowna. More working and middle class places tended to reject the HST. What does that tell you?
It tells you that lower and middle income people buy into the media propogand machine that tried to push this tax through
Don't you mean, didn't buy into it?
Sorry got it backwards
I really don't feel like I understand this issue. People of all stripes on twitter are cursing BC voters for their stupidity. Yet the arguments made by Vansterdam Kid and the BC NDP seem to make sense to me.
Interesting that the HST got crushed in Richmond - which is usually a rightwing stronghold - it is also heavily Chinese and clearly the HST was a big flop in that community. As for the $1.6 billion - if Ottawa forces BC to pay back the money - why doesn't the BC government (hopefully the NDP will be in power by then) launch a civil lawsuit against Gordon Campbell and the BC Liberal Party and demand that they and their corporate backkers pay the $1.6 billion.
The problem is in how you frame the argument. If you accept the premise that VAT or Sales taxes are alright then the argument is about a draw depending on what gets exempted and how big the rebates are. If you instead look to overall tax policy it is clear to me that the HST is a bad tax and also the PST is a bad tax.
I did not vote in the referendum because the right wing would love to put all tax increases and public spending to California style referendums. I will not play in that soiled sandbox.
This result may lead to Crusty "the Clown" Clark not calling an election prior to the set 2013 date. That is a proposition I don't really like to contemplate. Only about a third of the ridings voted NO (the BC Liberal position) so I am sure the back room rulers will be telling her to wait a few more years while they continue to pillage the province.
As I said, I don't even object to a single VAT-style tax on principle. It could make sense in theory, but there are just too many political, policy and economic arguments against this form of HST. And frankly I don't think governments that boldly lie to the public should be rewarded for it, even if I have problems with California-style governing by referendum. Though I think that fear is misplaced since the prospect of that has existed for almost 20 years and this is the first time the process was used and the threshold is thoroughly high that it's not likely that this sort of thing can be exercised on a whim. In short I still think our political traditions are more parliamentary and British than mob-ish and American.
There was an interesting comment I had seen on the TYEE, via someone quoting an NDP email blast questioning the propaganda about the HST being good for the economy of BC [and therefore the economies of other provinces that have introduce it too]:
"There was more evidence this week that the Clark government’s fixation on selling the HST has sold British Columbians short. Statistics Canada reported that retail sales growth from May to June was only 0.4% in B.C. compared to an average growth rate of 0.7% Canada-wide. Over the last year, since the HST was introduced, B.C. has seen only 2.6 per cent in growth compared to the national average of 4.6 per cent.
While the HST certainly had an effect on the economy, it seems it wasn’t quite what the B.C. Liberals were looking for. Originally, the Liberals promised the HST would create over 100,000 new jobs, but the reality is that there is nothing to suggest that even a single new job was created. In fact, B.C. job growth in recent months has been stunted behind the national average as well."
Interactive Graphs on the HST vote.
The issue is layered.
The change from the HST to PST was on the whole progressive (the new revenue sources are more taxes on rich expenditures - new homes, lawyer fees etc...). Even the tax shift can be argued for in this instance (where it applies along the supply chain).
The problem is that in the bigger picture, corporations have been receiving tax break upon tax break such that the tax burden has moved significantly to wage earners (vs capital earners).
Couple that with the way it was introduced. The Liberals campaigned against it in the last election and then changed policy immediately after the election. They then followed this with a convoluted story about how they only changed their mind after teh election.
What I'd like to know is why we couldn't get something like this going here in Ontario. We should have had a vote on this in Ontario too.
The HST isn't a very flexible tax regime. It sets a national threshold for taxes that may better benefit from a more regional approach. This temporary divorce from the old PST may allow for tax policy that addresses both competitiveness and a more equal tax burden.
The vote largely followed partisan lines, with the exception of Richmond as Stockholm noted, and most of the swing ridings voted against the HST. Due to this stark partisan alignment of the vote, it is hard not to think that this vote was more a referendum on the BC Liberals than the HST, and the BC Liberals should probably be quaking in their boots right now. Besides the fact that Clark lost, her party now has to contend with a $3-4 billion hole in a budget that is already running a sizeable deficit. The BC Liberals fiscal stewardship credentials are hanging by a thread.
I would like to see a quiz on BC government. Question # 1 would be which program had the most waste/cost overruns and who was government:
I think the Fast Ferries come 4th.
You missed BC Rail and the half billion money shuffle when the BC Liberals "restructured" BC Ferries and magically what we owned was sold to a new company that we owned and that "company" had to pay the government for the assets. Then the BC Ferry Corp went to the bond market and borrowed a cool half a billion and paid the money into government coffers. Balanced books for the government and the debt was off book, just like an Enron shuffle.
The fast cats are a long way down the list certainly not as high as fourth.
The stunts Campbell and the rest of the Liberal goon squad have pulled in the past decade makes any of the previous look like boy scouts, people like Bill Good talk about them (Clark/Campbell) like equals, laughable is an understatement.
Also no election this fall either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XFb4V3O4p4
The more I see of Adrian Dix, the more I like! Needless to say from the tone of his comments at the end of that snippet I get the disntinct impression that if Brian Topp runs for the federal leadership, Dix will be a strong champion of his.
Lame Duck Liberals : I hope the NDP can make the decision by Christy Clark not to go to the polls stick. Clark will want to focus on jobs and the economy, the NDP needs to point to the fiscal mess the Liberals have put the province in and ask if they are competent to govern. If the Liberals lose their fiscal and managerial cred, any economic cred will follow, especially because the stats on economic growth and debt accumulation during the last Liberal mandate is already far worse than that of the 1990s NDP.
In the next election, the NDP needs a business plank. Any half-way reasonable policy could be the last nail in the BC Liberals coffin.
Also, if the BC Conservatives are really as high as the polling says, then the NDP should do some polling in conservative ridings where the NDP has enough support that they could maybe squeak in on a three-way split (e.g. anywhere they got better than 1/3rd of the vote last time). Knowing where these ridings are could be used to put the Liberals on the defensive during the next campaign.
Of course, when it looks like Christy Clark might be willing to pull the trigger and have an election again, the BC NDP has to be ready to offer the old line, "Does Clark really want to break her own fixed elections law? It's bad enough that the Liberals already repealed their balanced budget act."
The stunts Campbell and the rest of the Liberal goon squad have pulled in the past decade makes any of the previous look like boy scouts, people like Bill Good talk about them (Clark/Campbell) like equals, laughable is an understatement.
Hi Ranger. It's a miracle of human self deception that any BC Liberal can still appear in public without getting chased by mobs with burning torches.
There is a broader lesson here too, I think. Sometimes the left can still ally itself with the populist right to defeat the corporate centre.