“I’m obviously as a finance minister disappointed by the results but not altogether surprised,” said Falcon in a press conference in Victoria.
“I’m obviously as a finance minister disappointed by the results but not altogether surprised,” said Falcon in a press conference in Victoria.
Good thing too. The less money funneled thru the government hands the better.
I support that effort.
Dumb.
Less taxation is better than more obviously, but returning to the old system is a mistake; hardly a surprise though.
Oh hell! here we go,the guvmint has promised to extend the PST to cover everything now covered by the HST anyway,so in the end taxpayers won’t save a bloody cent.
Not to even mention a repayment of the bribe given by the Feds for signing up.
Falcon said 6 month ago that it’d cost 560 million to re-institute the GST/PST,and you can bet it’ll cost every bit of that.
This was a referendum on Christy Clark and Gordon Campbell,and they just got whupped. If Clark is dumb enough to call an election, we should be a glorious NDP Province by Remembrance Day.
BC’er have a penchant for jumping from the frying pan to the fire,so I guess we’ll see if a government of the Ghost of Jack Layton is in our future.
Less taxation is always good, which is why I voted to keep the HST. Voting to extinguish the HST doesn’t mean we pay no tax all of a sudden – it means we go back to an older system with two bureaucracies. I fear this had a lot to do with how the system was implemented and many people ignored whether or not it was actually beneficial. If we want to punish the BC LIBS then punish them, but this isn’t how to do it!
For reasons outlined above, we were in a lose-lose situation entering the referendum, so no surprise, we lost.
All it really means is that the government found out the voters were displeased with their broken promise. But what we have in economic terms amounts to a choice between pay one way, or pay another way. It’s like a referendum on having tolls at the start of the bridge or the end of the bridge.
Of course you can always live on the bridge if you want to save money. Or just don’t drive over the bridge.
I voted to keep the HST primarily because of the cost to reinstate the older PST/GST combination. That doesn’t stop me from being really P****D at the Liberals because they flat-out LIED about the imposition of the HST. If they’d come forward during the election and said they were looking at it, that would have been fine. But the LYING B*****Ds said they were not even looking at the combined tax.
I’ve informed my local MLA (a Liberal cabinet member) that I certainly won’t be voting for him. I’m hoping we get a decent Conservative candidate for whom I can vote.
I voted yes to show the liberanos they cannot get away with the lies and deceit, on the other hand I didn’t do it so the Mr Dix’s and the NDP can ride it to a win.
Fortunately we have a new provincial conservative party, we need it up and running full speed ASAP.
I voted to keep it too. Should have had a referendum on the vile carbon tax instead.
If it’s so good for us why does the federal government have to bribe the provinces with billions of federal tax dollars to sign onto it?
Like they’re entitled if they have big bucks to throw around or something.
“Should have had a referendum on the vile carbon tax instead”
HERE HERE!
HST was sold as “revenue neutral”.
There is NO SUCH THING as revenue neutral in the known universe.
No gubment would go through this exercise to yield the same revenue.
Lying bastards.
Deeply disappointed with the Fraser Institute for backing this.
This “good for business” meme is sheer propaganda and I can see from some of the comments above that it has stuck.
I don’t care if they now extend the PST to cover previously exempt PST items.
At least the looting will be more visible.
The PST extension was semi-buried in the HST.
How anyone could favour NEW taxes, which was what the defeated HST would have entailed, simply mystifies me.
Where’d all that Federal bribery money go that we’re supposed to pay back now? Spent already? Say it isn’t so.
Also re: two tax system again. Do you think all the workers in the PST offices were fired last year when the HST was implemented?
Now i have herd ezra levant speak on this and as well i have herd i beleive brian lilley speak about this and that the hst was actually if you can say this .but a bit better than having the gst and pst ..i could be wrong here but maybe someone can clarify why they spoke some what positivley about this?
I would be interested in hearing the pros and cons of the hst.
Dumb.
Less taxation is better than more obviously, but returning to the old system is a mistake; hardly a surprise though.
Not dumb at all. A message had to be sent, and it was received by the politicians loud and clear. Whether the HST is good or bad (short term or long term) is irrelevant…it was the devious, dishonest way it was imposed on us that generated the reaction you saw today. I’m actually proud of the public for not falling for the old, “well, yeah…it wasn’t implemented properly. But you can’t shoot yourself in the foot just because you are mad about how they did it. The HST will be good for BC. You can’t go back now…it will cost too much money!” Well, yeah…we CAN and we DID shoot it down. And yes, it’s going to cost us. But rewarding that kind of behavior was just too much to swallow, and the politicians in BC are now on notice that the voters of this province will not be bullied, lied to or deliberately misled. And if you are arrogant enough to ignore this lesson and repeat the same mistake again, we will hammer the point home again at the next election.
It’s a great day for democracy.
PST, HST, hidden taxes, tax on taxes FED/PROV/MUNicipal taxes, carbon taxes, user fee taxes and on and on and on……..
The REAL message should be that there is only one taxpayer and I (we) are fed up. Quit spending like drunken sailors and leave a little money in our own pockets, where it belongs.
“Whether the HST is good or bad (short term or long term) is irrelevant..” Of course it’s relevant. Otherwise it’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face. The way to punish the politicians is to send them a mssg. on election day. This move punishes businesses and wastes taxpayer’s money. Campbell could care less at this point, so I don’t think the message hit its target. And why not the same hew and cry over the carbon tax?
Good. This was partly a referendum on the current moonbats in power in Victoria and it would have been far cheaper to have had a referendum to ask the people if they wanted the HST in the first place.
HST applied to all sorts of things that PST was not charged on and I can count the number of times I’ve eaten in a restaurant since the HST was introduced on the fingers of one hand. I used to enjoy going to restaurants to do reports but decided it was just too expensive with HST (and there was that taxed-enough already feeling). Now do I get a refund on all of the HST that was previously charged on non-PST items? I do have all my reciepts.
Now that the CLOUD experiment has provided the final coffin in the nail of CAGW, it’s going to be damn hard to support BC’s carbon tax.
If it wasn’t for the moonbat factor, BC would be the best place to live in the world. Right now I think I’ll start looking at practice opportunities in Alberta and the US (milder winters) as I suspect the next phase of BC politics will be the commies again and commies and doctors don’t get along.
Gee, sure hope they haven’t spent the 1.6 billion dollars on anything stupid.
Maybe an additional provincial tax to raise the money, to pay it back to the Feds, would be in order.
If we want to punish the BC LIBS then punish them, but this isn’t how to do it!
and
The way to punish the politicians is to send them a mssg. on election day.
But of course, this was the only way to punish them without really cutting our noses off. We cannot punish the Liberals at the ballot box because doing so will give us Adrian Dix. Christy Clark isn’t much better, she of the room temperature IQ, but at least she is held in check by the conservative side of her party.
For anyone suggesting we punish the Liberals by voting Conservative… Get Real! John Cummins can only help the NDP at this point.
If Bill Vander Zalm was against it then you should have been suspicious. Few tulips short of a bunch.
BC spins its wheels, enjoy the ride.
Paul, a harmonized HST is better than PST+GST because it’s overall a lower, broader tax. GST and HST have fewer exemptions in them than PST, and the tax is lower than the combination.
Second, a single sales tax is much cheaper for business to administer, especially small business, than two separate sales taxes with two separate requirements.
Third, a lower, broader sales tax generates some revenue from those who pay no income tax.
Fourth, in all previous areas in Canada where the tax has been harmonized, notably the maritime provinces, the efficiency savings have been passed on to customers through lower prices.
BC has done many truly stupid things in its economic history, but this repeal of the HST rates right at the top. But then, this kind of moronic behaviour is exactly what you can expect with government by referendum.
Warren, tough nougies. Think you left coasters can take money from the rest of Canada and then default on the deal? Pay up.
dmorris, and that cost is just from the government end. How much additional cost have the fine voters just offloaded onto small business by changing the tax system AGAIN? Frying pan to fire, you say? Welcome to the world of unintended consequences.
Blanks, if you think this is bribe money, you’re really in the wrong discussion.
To give you an example of the idiocy of the BC Liberal party, not too long ago Christie Clark announced a new great program for fat people. If you’re fat you go to your doctor and have them fill out some outrageously long form, send it off to the government and then you get a one time payment of $50 to spend on a gym membership. Now anyone with a brain can poke so many holes in this program it’s not even funny.
That’s just a taste there’s so many more of these stupid, stupid programs. The BC Liberals are EXACTLY like the federal ones.
BC voters deserve the politicians they get and the Politicians deserve the voters they get. I bet this is the last binding referendum ever held in Canada. My wife is a bookkeeper and the HST greatly reduced the amount of work required to satisfy the tax reporting of PST & GST. Fortunately for her she will be retiring before things switch back in 2013.
Vancouver Island mike
@cgh
“Warren, tough nougies. Think you left coasters can take money from the rest of Canada and then default on the deal? Pay up.”
What are you talking about? I never suggested we don’t pay it back. I was saying it should still be there. If not, it’d better have been spent on something with some cushy returns. I’m guessing it went into the government ether.
When I heard union leaders interviewed saying this is a good thing and the chamber of commerce saying it’s a bad thing …
Way to go B.C. Cut off your nose to spite your face again.
I actually voted for it to continue. To be clear, the previous 5% GST + 7% PST is the same as the current 12% HST. The difference is that the “new” tax was applied to a bunch of things than before: restaurant meals, haircuts, and a host of other things.
It was Gordon Campbell’s arrogance to push this through without any public consultation that was the death blow to the HST. If the extra applications of the tax were brought in slowly over a few years then I don’t think there would have been such an outcry.
I spent about 18 months in BC in the late 90’s and couldn’t wait to get the hell out. Beautiful province, mild climate, BUT greedy politicians of all stripes – and the voters who elected them get no pass from me either. Glen Clark was premier then and I’ve never seen such an inept, ideologically corrupt politician anywhere. Ever. Should BC slide back into the maw of left-wing ideology, it’s no less that that which they deserve.
I remember when sask. did the same thing – education and health tax&gst, harmonized tax and then back to pst&gst. I was working retail at the time and each change of policy meant sending away the till to get reprogrammed.
The NP has a good article on this. Good tax policy falls due to bad politics. Sneaking in taxes right after an election without talking about it during the election is a insult to voters. Politicians will of course get the message backwards and instead of gaining humility they will simply never, ever again call a referendum.
The problem is Canuck66 there is no difference between the BC Liberals and the NDP in BC. They are the same party.
Unbelievably good news! Are people finally waking up to the fact that they can stand up against endless government expansion? That they can say no to a government that wants more and more of their hard earned dollars. That they can say they have had enough of a government, that even with all the money it receives, cannot do anything particularly well.
The HST was a tax grab, plain and simple, despite the best efforts of government spin doctors to pretend otherwise.
The next wretched and misleading tax that should go is the carbon tax. In addition BC needs to *stop* forcing schools to by carbon credits at the taxpayers expense, which is serving only to line the pockets of global warming con-artists.
The sun is shining, it is Friday, and the HST got killed. What a fantastic way to end the week!
In Ontario, the HST is on everything. Services were exempt before. I’m a veterinarian, so we only had PST on food and shampoo. Now all our services are 8% higher and believe me, the clients are feeling it.
On the other hand, I now get to deduct the HST I pay on everything I purchase within the practice.
If it was not a tax grab, the HST would have exempted all the things the PST exempted.
A pig is a pig, and if you put lipstick on it and call it the HST, it is still a pig.
Those who are complaining about the result have only one party to blame and that is the Liberals, who have gone into overdrive on spending over the last few years.
Well the spending party just came to an end, and if killing the HST was the way to do it, then so bet it.
The Liberals have *failed* miserably to listen to many of their supporters (think carbon tax for example), and now they are reaping what they have sown.
“If the extra applications of the tax were brought in slowly over a few years then I don’t think there would have been such an outcry.” Robert
Robert, what you are effectively saying is that people are dumb enough that if you sneak a tax up on them they won’t notice. Something along the lines of killing a frog in slowly heated water.
Mark Steyn’s new book is very timely.
Soccermom
Scott
Correct. I agree the carbon tax should have been the object of the referendum and the rebellion.
I am afraid I have my doubts about the BC Conservative Party (platform, people).
Dumb dumb dumb. I voted to retain the HST, but was pretty sure it was going down to defeat. People had a bad taste in their mouth after the Liberals announced the thing mere weeks after the election after saying, during the election, they were not contemplating as HST.
Too many sheeple not realizing Campbell resigned months ago over the matter.
Fortunately we have a new provincial conservative party, we need it up and running full speed ASAP.
Posted by: FREE at August 26, 2011 5:12 PM
Should you get your wish, it’s an automatic win for the NDP. The BC Reform party siphoned off enough Liberal votes in 1996 allowing the NDP to come up the middle for a win. This despite the fact they actually received FEWER votes than the Liberals.
Now BC has to refund to Fed Govt the 1.6 Billion it got as HST transition fund. And under no circumstances should it be forgiven, their choice their pain.
So which is it? We’re sheeple now for rejecting the government? Ha. Sure, this may have had something to do with a grudge against Campbell but it was also much more than that. Show me all the progress we’ve had in BC since the HST has been in place. The only real benefit I know of is that it makes doing the books simpler for business.
“Dumb dumb dumb. I voted to retain the HST, but was pretty sure it was going down to defeat. People had a bad taste in their mouth after the Liberals announced the thing mere weeks after the election after saying, during the election, they were not contemplating as HST.
Too many sheeple not realizing Campbell resigned months ago over the matter.”
Hmmm
In BC
I wonder if the pri$e of fuel at the pump will go up now?
Warren, the whole point of the thing was to simplify the tax system, which you cavalierly dismiss. Additionally, the government announced it would reduce the thing to 10% over a period of a couple years.
Not sure how the math on that works, but at 10%, the HST would probably be pretty much a wash when compared with GST+PST, the PST exempted from many items.
The ref was binding, so now the government needs to pay back a hefty sum to the feds, businesses need to switch back to a two-tax system, and the province needs to re-establish the PST bureaucracy. Seems a heavy price to pay, literally, to my way of thinking.
IMO, the only thing that can help the sane part of BC now is the interior of BC leaving and joining up with Alberta. Where I live now, in the south central interior, it seems like the left coast is a foreign country and people travel to Calgary or Edmonton to shop and dread having to go to Vancouver. I’m fortunate being in the position that I can just get up and leave if the commies form the next BC government.
One major expense for doctors caused by the HST was paying tax on office rent – I figured that if I charged patients $0.50-0.75 per visit it would make up for the shortfall in revenue we were experiencing but got voted down by the other doctors in the clinic. No-one else wanted to be the first to pass on the extra costs to “customers”.
As far as voting for the BC lieberals, I’ll spoil my ballot before I vote for them. They’re the largest remaining part of the Cretin lieberal party with still strong connections to the federal lieberals. I’m voting either Libertarian (if a candidate is running in my riding) or for the BC Conservative party.
Can the Carbon tax be next? I doubt it but wishful thinking persists.
Yes, the HST left a bad taste in my mouth for the way it was enacted,(much the same as the Carbon tax was) but the BC government needs revenue after the Olympics and a reduction in cross border traffic this summer.
I get incensed every time I go to the pump and look at that price knowing its just not a carbon tax but a trans-link levy that’s thrown into that price.
BC’ers are over taxed. The revolt on the HST was a referendum on taxation with the only avenue the people had at this time, and they chose to send a message, with the only instrument they had.
That mail in ballot.
But, but wasn’t the carbon tax supposed to be revenue neutral as well? Gas prices Vancouver $129.9. Gas prices Calgary $1.10-$1.13.9, I filled up last weekend @ 109.9. $.20 cents per is not a fortune but it adds up. Sure glad I left the beautiful province of B(ring) C(ash).
Never voted for the “BC” Liberals, never, ever voted for the NDP and never will. Tax, Tax, Tax, and worthless, unnecessary social engineering schemes, and carbon Taxes from both of these crooked party’s. I will be voting for the BC Conservatives, and no amount of intimidation and bullying will change that. Campbell was a sleazy lying crook, with a strong authoritarian bent, Krusty Clark is an attention seeking nit-wit, and Comrade Adrian Dix is a marxist fool. The resulting decision of the referendumb, although wrong, is not surprising in the least.
Glad it’s gone.
In principle, it makes sense, but the execution was badly badly handled. Every step along the way, if the Fiberals could screw it up, they did.
Revenue Neutral? Spin doctoring.
Never on the radar? Brought in 5 days after the election! More spinning.
Many items taxed that weren’t taxed before. Again, terrible policy, and there was every reason in the world to keep the exemptions.
But Gordo’s Leftwing Liberals only had greed in their eyes.
This is the same government that when it came to power, exclaimed that tax cuts would drive the economy, and they did.
Fast forward 10 years, and now they were saying that tax INCREASES would drive the economy. Sorry, those of us who have supported the gov, grudgingly, holding our noses (carbon tax anybody), have had enough. We won’t vote NDP, but I will never vote for the harridan Left Wing Federal Liberal Chrusty Clark. Period.
These Fiberals have jumped the shark.
And bring on the government cuts. No problem there. Best thing that could happen going into the teachers negotiations, now the gov can truly say that the cupboard is bare.
You would think the unions could see that one coming!
TJ, I agree with every single point you made.
I voted to extinguish the H.S.T.
My prediction is that Christie Clark will not be premier for very long. She’s no conservative.
Me and my family will also vote for the BC Conservatives. If you don’t like their platform, get involved. I am so tired of all the naysayers that tell me that voting for the conservatives will bring the NDP back. How about, if you are really a conservative, you vote for them instead of the liberals? Maybe just maybe we then have a change in BC that works for us. If you are waiting for the “perfect” conservative party with the “perfect” leader however you will be waiting a very long time.
I voted to kill the HST. I don’t know if the HST is an economically superior taxation system or not. Most economists think so – but given the extremely iffy state of the global ecomomy, how far can they be trusted?
Anyway, the bottom line for me was always the arrogantly dishonest way the Campbell government foisted the HST on us with no debate whatever. We just can’t have our elected representatives telling us bald-faced lies and getting away with it. Gordon Campbell is gone as a result of this and good riddance to him. However, his replacement and many other Liberal pols are not much better; so a real downside now is that the NDP will likely be elected. Both Lib and NDP are crappy choices. We need a strong conservative party.
In about an hour I am going out to have a pint with a couple of buddies who work for the provincial govt. One is a tax lawyer, the other a litigation lawyer. About a year ago the tax lawyer was all bummed out because the HST had wiped out the entire section he worked for. He was was busy trying to clean-up loose ends with no staff.
Tonight I know he will be looking forward to the challange of hiring even more staff than he had before to deal with the mess that will be created by this stupidity.
The litigation lawyer is looking forward to the challange of just dealing with the mess that will be created by this stupidity. More staff for him as well…
My nominations for replacement tax revenues, coming to B.C. taxpayers soon:
1) Increased income taxes, particularly from an NDP government;
2) Elimination of the property tax deferment voter bribe program as real estate tanks, the baby boomers retire, owners go bankrupt, and the province realizes that big sucking sound coming from this program is just another money pit;
3) An increase in the carbon (sic) tax, with a much bigger increase under the NDP.