Below this text are two letters. The first is a letter sent to me from Adrian Dix of the BC NDP discussing why he’s against HST in British Columbia. Following that letter is my response that asks why the NDP is not willing to debate this issue honestly. I’m not a BC Liberal for any number of reasons and even though they’ve been equally dishonest in terms of bringing real points to the debate, I didn’t just receive their letter in my inbox tonight.
I would love to hear from people on the honesty of this HST debate and whether they feel I’m off-base in believing that no side is coming clean about anything other than their willingness to posture against one another.
From Adrian Dix:
David
Yesterday, my campaign manager for our Vote YES BC campaign wrote you a detailed email about our plans to win the referendum and scrap the HST. I wanted to follow up today with a short note to you personally. I wanted to let you know just how critical your personal contribution of $10.00 is to our campaign, right now.
The HST is the largest single tax shift from corporations to families and small businesses in the history of British Columbia. The HST is not just about how much your taxes are. It is about who pays for public services — and more than that, this referendum is about whether we will maintain high quality public services like Medicare at all.
Throughout my career I have wholeheartedly rejected every attempt to take money away from vital public services. They must be funded, they are critical to our communities. There is a model for public funding that works – progressive taxation that sees corporations, small businesses and households pay their fair share.
With regressive new taxes like the HST – corporations pay less and you pay more. The HST adds seven per cent to hundreds of everyday items like a cup of coffee, bicycles, home renovations and school supplies while reducing taxes on some of the most profitable corporations by almost $2 billion – including businesses that operate solely by extracting your publicly-owned resources.You pay more every time there are increases to the user fees like MSP premiums, ferry fares, tuition fees or transit fares.You pay more every time sales taxes are added to critical household goods.Funding efficient public services takes strong support for those services. But families cannot be asked to shoulder more and more of the burden. The HST is about making the biggest corporations in British Columbia pay less for public services and has been brought in by a government that has given up on supporting critical services like education and health care.Today, I am asking you to come together with every New Democrat and everyone opposed to this unfair tax, right now and help obtain an overwhelming YES vote to scrap the HST.
The choice is simple.Vote Yes to Scrap the HST and end this massive tax shift from big corporations to you and your family.The best way to help make this happen is to make a donation of $10.00-a donation that will fund our campaign by $40.00 thanks to a generous tax credit worth $30.00.Go online to our VoteYesBC.ca website and donate, right now.Donate a tax-deductible contribution to our campaign to scrap the HST by voting YES in the referendum.-AdrianPS: Neil Monckton, Vote YESBC Campaign Manager and several others on my campaign will be sending you important emails over the next few days and weeks, as we work hard to defeat this unfair tax. Together we can win this campaign!PPS: Even Christy Clark has admitted that she is using sales taxes for important public services: “Cutting the HST by one point is more than $800 million out of the budget this year and every year after that, $1.6 billion for a two-point cut… we’re going to have $1.6 billion fewer heart operations, special needs teachers, school facilities, hospital emergency rooms.”[1] This was back in March before she decided to desperately try and cut the tax rate to save her tax shift. At the time Christy Clark also said: “We aren’t going to be talking about trying to reduce [the HST] by a point or two before the referendum. I mean, I think people will see that as buying them with their own money.”[2][1] Red FM, 21 March 2011[2] Red FM, 21 March 2011
My response:
Dear Adrian [Dix] and Jenny [Kwan],
I wanted to write a response to this letter because this debate is something that bothers me to no end. For disclosure, I’ll say that I’m for the HST, but barely. If I have 100 votes, 51 times out of 100 I would vote for the HST. In August 2009, I wrote a blog about the HST where I explained why I was against it initially and I’m open to changing my view again before casting my vote in the referendum. I am a past member of the Vancouver Board of Trade, active member of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and a Certified Management Accountant and I’ve worked hard to make sure these special interest and lobby groups don’t speak for me on the issue of HST in this province.
What I would love from just one side, if not both sides, is honest debate and I don’t believe this letter executes that very well. I can appreciate that some posturing has to occur if you must. I was at Kevin Falcon’s press conference on red tape last week and it was great until he uttered the words “…unlike Adrian Dix and the NDP if they were in power.” It’s unfortunate that there’s really no indication that common ground could ever exist on anything in order to benefit all British Columbians, but I digress.
In this letter, there is mention of the savings on a corporate level, which is fair. I cited that in my own blog in 2009 as well. What’s missing from this letter is how the every-day person or family will be affected and I don’t mean the line “The HST adds seven per cent to hundreds of everyday items like a cup of coffee, bicycles, home renovations and school supplies…“. What I mean is that you could say “You will be saving money on your income tax deductions. Your personal exemption has increased by $1,700, which gives you $85 in your pocket because that $1,700 would have been taxed at 5.06%. And, if you’re a person who makes under $20,000, you will receive an HST tax credit. If you’re in a family that makes less than $25,000, you’ll receive a credit, too. If you’re in this category, you need to spend $4,500 a year on items that weren’t previously taxable with PST. In addition, if you make between $20,000 and about $36,000 as an individual, you get no income tax breaks other than that $85 in your pocket and you get no HST credit, how does that make you feel?”
There are many opportunities to get people to think for themselves just by presenting all the facts in a way that people get. Let people look at their own spending and decide whether the HST works for them or not. For most, it doesn’t, I’m sure.
I really wish there was at least one side in this debate that was willing to treat the public like adults capable of making their own decisions.
Sincerely,
Dave Macdonald, CMA