In my opinion the taxpayers of B.C. have been snookered by the present provincial government and the Federal Government of the time, with the term HST.
It is definitely not a harmonized sales tax (HST) it is a new sales tax (NST). If the governments had truly harmonized the tax the GST would have been combined with the PST in its then-existing format.
Instead, the governments changed the terms of the PST making it a completely new tax with different conditions and virtually no exceptions compared to the original PST.
At the same time the governments transferred a large portion of the taxes from the corporations onto the consumers.
A number of the items added to the NST were the basic necessities of food, shelter and clothing, some of which were already included in the original PST, but the number has been greatly increased. This change puts a larger load on the lower income population and in my opinion the pittance in the rebates does not nearly make up for the difference.
We are being advised by the present B.C. government that the cost of reverting to the original tax collection system would involve rehiring 300 tax collection employees at an unknown cost.
It seems to me that if the law was changed to allow the original PST to be reinstated as part of the now-new HST (NNHST) there would be no reason to change the present procedure of tax collection or the computer systems.
I understand that there is an agreement that the laws governing the HST cannot be changed for two years and that is why the provincial government has suggested that they will be reducing the tax to 10 per cent over the next two years provided they are re-elected during that time. Whatever happened to the ability of the Governments to repeal or change a law?
In this case I, as one presently very disappointed taxpayer, feel that both the federal and provincial governments have over extended their mandate to govern and I now understand why people are not registering their votes.
How long until we are in the same situation as the Libyans?
Richard A. Young
Parksville