Revised HST HIT LIST 2010

Apr 24, 2010 Details

The HST will cost everyone more: students, workers, pensioners, young, old and YOU.

Check off everything that affects you and write beside it your weekly / monthly / yearly cost for those items – then multiply by 7% MORE to see your total HST tax hit!

HAVE WE MISSED ANYTHING? Please advise us of any missed HIT’s by posting a comment on this post.

This HIT List is a guide only, and is subject to change, Corrections have been made to conform with Mr. Hansen’s complaints to Elections BC about accuracy.

Fight HST Hit List

Accounting
Admission Fees
Airline tickets
Appliance repair & maintenance
Architects
Art Galleries Admission
Attractions / Events
Ballet Lessons
Basic Cable TV
Bicycles
Campgrounds
Catering
Chinese medicine
Cigarettes / Cigars
Clothing – used adult (less than $100)
Clothing –adult sized children
Coffee shops
Commercial Leases
Compost
Computer servicing
Concert Tickets
Condo management fees
Consulting services
Conveyance fees
Dietary supplements
Driving Range fees
Dry cleaning
Electronics repair
Energy equipment
Esthetician Services
Fast food – Beverages
Fire extinguishers
First aid kits
Fishing charters
Fitness Club memberships
Fitness Trainers
Food producing trees and plants
Funeral services
Golf fees
Grass Cutting
Hair cuts
Hall rental
Health equipment
Helmets
Hockey rink rentals
Hockey tickets
Home appraisals
Home inspections
Home maintenance
Home renovations (Labour)
House Cleaning services
Insulation
Interior design services
Investment Counseling fees
Landscaping
Life jackets
Limousine rentals
Magazines/ newspapers
Marketing services
Massage therapy
Membership fees
Moorage
Movies / Theatre
Moving Costs
Museum admissions
Music / Video MP3 downloads
Naturopathy
New Homes (some rebates applicable)
Nicotine replacements
Non-prescription meds
Painting
Parking
Photography
Private Bus fares
Rail travel (originating in BC)
Real estate fees
Reflexology
Rentals for Weddings, Canopy, Tuxedo etc.
Reroofing House
Restaurant meals
RV parks
Safety equipment (Not all safety and Energy Equipment is affected)
School supplies
Shoe repairs
Skiing
Smoke detectors
Snow removal
Solar power
Some groceries
Spa services
Sports Training / Lessons
Storage lockers
Tailoring
Taxi fares
Telephone (Basic Charge for landlines will be affected)
Theatre admissions
Veterinarian
Vitamins
Wedding Planner
Windows (energy star)

Rentals / Strata fees (Though they are HST exempt, most people will notice increases brought on by an increase in maintenance costs and other costs associated with owning Rental and Strata properties)

Used cars / trucks / boats / non-turbine aircraft (Private Sale will have an additional 5% tax, it is not called HST)

Tags: airline tickets, appliance repair, bus fares, coffee shops, computer servicing, dry cleaning, fares airline, food beverages, golf fees, hit list, hst tax, massage therapy, membership fees, music lessons, prescription meds, propane, restaurant meals, spa services, strata fees, taxi fares, tobacco

Campbell’s #HST Illusion by: David D. Schreck

Mar 10, 2010 Guest Posts

On July 1, 2009, France reduced its value added tax (VAT – the equivalent of our GST or HST) on restaurant meals from 18.5% to 5.5%. They did that because they accepted the evidence that the tax on restaurant meals kills jobs; they expect 40,000 jobs to be created as a result of cutting the tax. Why does Premier Campbell think that economics works differently in British Columbia? If you can answer that question you might also know why he would say one thing before an election and do the opposite after the election.

Finance Minister Colin Hansen was almost laughed out of the room when he told reporters that money from the HST would be earmarked for health care. On March 6th, Vancouver Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer wrote: “By the end of this week, even Hansen was admitting that the move to link the HST to health care was mainly an exercise in public relations.”

Not to be deterred by its failed public relations exercise, today the Campbell government released a propaganda sheet that it tried to spin as an economic study. The 13 page paper by Jack Mintz of the University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy claims that over ten years the HST “is expected to increase the province’s capital stock by more than $14.4 billion and add 141,000 new jobs.” The words “is expected to” are significant because Mintz’s claims are nothing but wishful thinking, not backed up by any testable hypotheses – no model, no estimation techniques, no standard errors of the estimates.

Mintz argued that: “When maximizing the value of their shareholders’ equity, businesses will invest in capital until the marginal return on it is equal to its cost.” As the recent financial mess around the world demonstrated, it is arguable whether large corporations maximize shareholders’ equity, but that is not the biggest hole in the Mintz paper. He maintained that by lowering the marginal effective tax rate (METR) on capital, more projects will be attractive for business investments. Despite a few footnotes about assumed capital-labour substitution and the risk of changing federal policy, there is nothing in his paper that spells out how he arrived at estimates of precisely $14.4 billion in investment over 10 years and 141,000 new jobs.

Mintz failed to put his unsubstantiated estimates in the context of BC’s traditional investment and job growth so readers could tell whether his numbers are significant and thereby judge whether they justify shifting $2 billion a year from businesses to consumers. Note that in the absence of inflation that would be a shift of $20 billion over 10 years to justify investment of $14.4 billion; if Mintz is right, consumers could do the investment themselves and be almost $6 billion ahead. Back to the context for comparison: at 2% annual employment growth, BC will add over 390,000 in the next ten years. Mintz is claiming that the HST will boost that by 36%. That strains credibility when we know that jobs will be lost in the hospitality sector because of the tax. As for investment, over the 10 year period ending in 2008, businesses invested $97 billion in machinery and equipment in BC and $82 billion in non-residential structures, so Mintz is claiming that if the next 10 years are the same, business investment would increase by 8%. For those who are here 10 years from now, it might be challenging to separate the effect of lowering the METR from the effects of changing interest rates and commodity prices.

Before committing to the HST, BC had the opportunity to study the consequences of eliminating the provincial sales tax on production machinery and equipment. Instead of commissioning Mintz to produce his paper, the Campbell government might have attempted to analyze its own tax experiment. The Campbell government eliminated the PST on “production machinery and equipment” in 2001. I submitted a freedom of information request asking how much tax revenue was foregone for each year since that exemption and for any documents that discuss estimates of changes in investment as a result of the exemption. On October 30, 2009 I received an answer saying: “Pleased be advised that the Ministry has no records responsive to your request. Budget 2001 estimated the cost of the exemption when first introduced but the cost has not been estimated since because it is not part of the Tax Expenditure Survey.” Before embarking on one of the largest tax shifts in BC history, one might think that the government would have analyzed whether its initial experiment in stimulating investment worked or not, instead they hired Mintz to write a propaganda sheet.

It is probably true that lower taxes on investment means more investment, just as it is true that higher prices on restaurant meals means fewer meals. The trick is in determining how much. There appears to be good evidence that restaurant meals purchased decline by 1% for every 1% increase in price. There appears to be little or no evidence on how business investment responds to changes in taxation, but most economists would acknowledge that interest rates and commodity prices are likely to be far more important than marginal tax changes.

There doesn’t appear to be any provincial public opinion polling in the works that will allow us to measure whether the Liberals enjoyed a post-Olympic bounce or whether the public is buying their political spins. It may be the fall before the spin is tested, after folks see what the HST does to the price of lunch and a cup of coffee.

Tags: business investments, capital stock, economic study, effective tax rate, election finance, estimation techniques, finance minister, financial mess, HST, jack mintz, large corporations, new jobs, restaurant meals, shareholders equity, sun columnist, testable hypotheses, university of calgary, vancouver sun, wishful thinking

PRESS RELEASE: BC CITIZENS’ INITIATIVE APPLICATION BY FORMER PREMIER BILL VANDER ZALM TO KILL THE HST APPROVED BY ELECTIONS BC FOR APRIL

Feb 5, 2010 Press Release

PRESS RELEASE: BC CITIZENS’ INITIATIVE APPLICATION BY FORMER PREMIER BILL VANDER ZALM
TO KILL THE HST APPROVED BY ELECTIONS BC FOR APRIL

Vancouver, BC – A British Columbia Initiative petition to kill the proposed 12% Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) on virtually all goods and services in BC, has been approved by Elections BC, former Premier, Fight HST leader and petition applicant Bill Vander Zalm announced Thursday.

Fight HST, the group started by Vander Zalm, said the Elections BC approved Citizens’ Initiative can begin signature collection on April 6, 2010.

If implemented on July 1, 2010, the HST announced last year by Premier Gordon Campbell would add an additional 7% tax on everything from restaurant meals, haircuts, bicycles, and gym memberships to golf fees, airline tickets, funeral services, new homes over $525,000 to professional fees like accounting and much more.

Vander Zalm is currently travelling on business in California but issued a statement:

“The citizen’s Initiative petition is our first move and it is the people’s opportunity to tell the governments that we are still a democracy and not totally an elected dictatorship,” Vander Zalm said. “The Initiative is also the people’s opportunity to kill the HST.”

Fight HST spokesman Bill Tieleman said that: “The citizens’ Initiative petition is a legally-binding petition, which if successful will require the government to either conduct a province-wide referendum on the HST or to present an Act to repeal the HST in the legislature.”

Tieleman explained that the Fight HST group must collect the signatures of 10% of registered voters in all 85 BC electoral districts in 90 days to be successful.

“We will have to collect all those signatures between April 6 and July 5. We have over 1,500 volunteers from across the province who have already agreed to canvass for signatures, and we expect that number to increase dramatically as we approach the start date and people see that the HST can indeed be stopped,” he said.

Chris Delaney, Lead Organizer for Fight HST, said that the proposed legislation for the citizens’ Initiative would nullify the HST agreement between the federal government and the province, thereby extinguishing the HST in BC.

“We would return to the Provincial Sales Tax as it was applied before the surprise HST announcement,” said Delaney. “Our legislation would be effective retroactively from June 30, 2010, the day before the proposed implementation of the HST. This means the government will have to refund all extra HST revenues they collect over and above what they would have received under the PST, to British Columbia taxpayers. It’s their money after all,” said Delaney.

Delaney said Fight HST is calling on Premier Campbell to tell British Columbians whether he will abide by the voters wishes and repeal the HST if the petition is successful.

“British Columbians deserve to know if their Premier, the same man who has repeatedly expressed support for grass roots democracy and effective Citizen Initiative legislation, will abide by it when it is applied to his government.”

Tags: airline tickets, bicycles, bill vander zalm, British Columbia, dictatorship, electoral districts, first move, funeral services, golf fees, gym memberships, haircuts, harmonized sales, HST, initiative petition, premier gordon campbell, professional fees, registered voters, restaurant meals, signature collection, vancouver bc