To the Editor,
The Fair Tax Alliance promote keeping the HST. In my opinion they are using misleading statements when they ask voters “would they prefer to choose the HST at 10 per cent versus the former GST/PST at 12 per cent?”
Let’s put that in perspective. There is no 10-per cent tax. Therefore the question is misleading and is being used as an inducement to coerce voters into accepting a tax which they have already told their government they do not want.
Were a business to use this practice it would find itself in a lot of trouble very quickly.
Former premier Gordon Campbell tried the same tactic when he offered a tax cut days before he resigned, that proposed tax cut was quickly withdrawn, and that action exposed it for what it was, an inducement just like a carrot to a work mule.
Do the Smart Tax Alliance and the B.C. Liberals really believe that the people of B.C. are so unsophisticated that they do not see the implications of the HST? Do they believe we are so dumb as to believe that loading us up with $2.8 billion of additional tax, a tax that used to be paid by corporations, is a good thing?
The voters have to decide one simple question: “Do you want to pay $2.8 billion a year forever?” or “Would you prefer to pay $1.6 billion one time to get the federal government out of our provincial treasury and corporations out of our pockets?”
I, for one, don’t need an accountant or professor of economics to answer that one. Vote ‘yes’ to extinguish the HST.
Terry Hand
Nanaimo