Editor:
The sky is not falling, and for those who are concerned the B.C. government will lose much needed tax revenues as the HST is being phased out, have no fear.
The 5% GST + the 7% PST will produce the same revenues as the 12% HST simply by applying the GST and the PST to the same items we pay the harmonized tax on today.
There is also no urgency developing a new tax system. We don’t have a serious revenue problem – we have a huge spending problem.
The B.C. Liberal government has been taxing and spending the province into a deep dark hole.
The Clark government should immediately put a moratorium on increases and new spending.
It should then reclaim control of all crown corporations where literally billions of dollars are being wasted.
Civil servants pensions, bonuses, severance and retirement packages must be brought back into line with the real world.
Use and abuse of overtime must be brought under control.
Harmonizing means centralizing, and the reason why the federal government offered the province 1.5 billion dollars to sign onto the HST was because it would give the feds control of the tax.
For the Liberal government it was cool one and a half billion dollars cash, without having to go to the B.C. tax payers.
The tax system we had was fine except that the PST was applied at the end of the production line, representing an unnecessary cost and inconvenience to businesses.
By separating the two taxes the province will now be able to pick and choose the goods and services that will be subject to the PST and it should continue to collect both taxes at the final point of sale.
Andy Thomsen, Summerland
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Editor:
The HST will be history in 18 months and we will convert back to the old GST/PST system. The end result will be the old tax system that will cost billions of dollars to reintroduce and to operate. The government should be given a hard time for the way they introduced the HST but we, the taxpayers, should not be punished for what they did.
In general the HST was a positive tax and the main negatives were the way it was introduced and that it added the former PST to all items taxed under the GST. Gordon Campbell also reduced the provincial income tax by 25% during his first year in office, ran balanced budgets and reduced the net debt to 15.7 of GDP from 18.5%. No government is perfect.
Because of this negative decision by the people of B.C. there will be a shortage of funds for essential and needed services such as education, medical and security. The solution will have to be an increase in taxes, visible or hidden. The 2% reduction in the HST has also gone down the drain.
The normal way to punish a government is to kick them out of office as we did with the Bill Vander Zalm government. Most people do not like taxes but without them we could not have democratic government. All we ask is they spend our tax dollars wisely.
Eric J. Bysouth, Langley