July 1st, 2010: B.C. “harmonized” the Provincial Sales Tax with the federal Goods & Services Tax; result is the HST.
April 1st, 2013: B.C. “deharmonizes” the taxes and returns to the PST and the GST.
If you look the word “harmonize” up at dictionary.com, the word ‘agreement’ can be seen several times. Living in B.C. for both these political gambits, I find the term ‘oxymoron’ keeps coming to mind.
I am not going to go on a political rant here as almost every single person and business in B.C. has an opinion about both these moves. What frustrates me, however, is the cost to the taxpayer and to (especially) small business owners.
Surely there are bigger financial fish to fry than playing around with what taxes are called and who has to ante up another % or 2 and on which products. I am all for paying taxes and I understand that taxes contribute the lion’s share of dollars to government coffers (that’s an opinion, I have no idea if it is true), but at least have the courtesy to spend the money on social programs or infrastructure or safety et al, not wasting time on meaningless bills and changes and rhetoric and chest-beating.
This was supposed to be an “In The News” category post so I will post links to ‘the news’, and I will add the category “In My Opinion” to the post.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/02/17/bc-new-home-hst.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/02/13/bc-hst-transition-pst_n_2681232.html
Last thought: when you only need to be responsible for your decisions for four years, it must be easy to make sweeping changes, to hell with the cost or the long-term impact.