OP/ED: To fix HST Clark needs to follow Harper's example
By Contributor
By: Gregory Thomas, British Columbia Communications Director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Premier Christy Clark says she is going to fix the harmonized sales tax (HST) for B.C. families and she says she is going to fix it before the end of May. We can’t wait.
And we’re hopeful, if not optimistic, that she won’t screw it up.
At the B.C. Liberal convention last weekend in Penticton, the premier said the government is considering a number of improvements to the HST.
“They are going to be bold,” she told delegates. “They are going to be smart, and they are going to focus on the families of this province. They will also work within our balanced budget commitments. So stay tuned – change is coming to the HST.”
The premier needs to be bold. She faces the same challenging circumstances that destroyed the federal Progressive Conservative government of Kim Campbell in 1993: a deeply unpopular new tax and an electorate profoundly mistrustful of the party in power. Voters were willing to give Canada’s first female prime minister a chance – early in the campaign, polls showed her in the lead – but they wanted to see a fundamental change of direction. They wanted her to prove she was the boss and prove she was different.
It was 13 years before a new Canadian leader met the test, but Stephen Harper closed the deal with Canadian voters, first by promising to cut the GST from 7 percent to 6 percent, to 5 percent and then by delivering on that promise.
Bold. Savvy. And best of all, simple.
B.C. voters have had it with politicians, economists, accountants and other people in suits telling us how the HST is too complicated for ordinary mortals to understand.
The HST should not be complicated. Everybody already understands that under the HST, more stuff is taxed than under the old provincial sales tax. But in other provinces where the HST was successfully introduced, they dropped the rate so that taxpayers didn’t pay for the new system through the nose.
In B.C., the government decided instead to tell us how complicated everything is and nail every family in the province for roughly $350 in additional tax.
It’s been nearly two years since Gordon Campbell and his minister of finance blundered into this divisive HST war by creating complications where none existed.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation urged them then to follow Harper’s example, by dropping the rate from 7 per cent to 5 per cent. Back then, we listened to Campbell’s minister of finance explain they couldn’t cut the rate – that a one percentage point reduction in the HST would cost the B.C. government $850 million in lost revenue. Then last weekend, Christy Clark’s minister of finance repeated the same argument, of course adding that it’s very complicated.
British Columbia’s HST is complicated because the Campbell government made it complicated. They bolted on nine different loopholes, rebates, exemptions and credits to the existing GST, at a price tag of $942 million in lost revenue.
On the weekend, Christy Clark’s ministers boldly followed Gordon Campbell’s ministers, proclaiming that 1.2 million low-income families are now receiving cheques. These cheques add up to as much as $920 a year for a low-income family of four, thanks to the HST. That’s just one $214 million BC Liberal experiment in social engineering.
There are eight more.
Booksellers, new home builders, university presidents – anybody with a talented lobbyist in Victoria – managed to convince Gordon Campbell that they should get a break on the HST, while the rest of us should pay more.
If Christy Clark wants to fix the HST for B.C. families, she should consider Stephen Harper’s simple solution, cut the HST for everyone and make a bold, smart break with the past.
