02) VOTE "YES" TO AXE THE TAX! DEFEAT THE HST!
Statement by the Communist Party of British Columbia, June 2011
The BC Campbell Liberals, in cahoots with the Harper Tories, conspired secretly prior to the May 2010 provincial election to construct a monumental tax scam. Their HST is shifting billions of dollars from the public purse and consumer pockets into the corporate purse. The federal Tories paid the BC Liberals a $1.6 billion bribe to do what they promised they would never do. While they were promising during the election campaign not to implement the HST, they were arranging how to do it.
This is how the swindle works.
BC businesses that formerly paid PST and were rebated GST now enjoy a "Harmonized" rebate of both the GST and the PST. BC corporations pay the HST up front and then get a 100% rebate. The working public pay both taxes on an enlarged base of taxable items. Billions going into corporate bank accounts and billions coming out of the income of working families.
In the tradition of Gordon Campbell, new boss, same gang.
Christy Clark has inherited the BC Liberal tradition of broken promises, hidden agendas and outright lies. The smashed HEU contracts, smashed teachers' contracts on class size and composition, tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy in 2001, 2005 and 2009, and the criminal sale of BC Rail, set the Liberal operating procedure for sellout of the public's interest, and the largest transfer of wealth into the corporate pockets in BC history.
On the eve of the HST referendum, Clark has introduced schemes to bribe people with their own money to vote "NO" against scrapping the HST. She has promised that if voters keep the HST, she will reduce it to 11% by July 12, 2012 and a further drop to 10% by July 2014. To compensate for the lost revenue, she will temporarily increase corporate taxes and eliminate scheduled small business subsidies.
Christy Clark has no control over the federal part of the HST. Her promises are a continuation of the Liberal method - promise one thing and do the opposite. She is desperately trying to put out the fire and win support for the HST, with promises that are only hot wind.
Cash Cows and Pork Barrels
The HST is a "value added tax", a cash cow and pork barrel for provincial and federal governments. In other countries with VAT taxes, the rates have been hiked at government whim ? in England to 17.5% in 2010, and in France now up to 19.6% on food. The federal implementation bribe was paid for the future ability to squeeze more out of the public and rebate it to the corporations. On top of the HST scam, MSP premiums are scheduled to rise 6% per year, while health care cuts continue.
The defeat of the HST is the first step in the fight for Progressive Tax Reform.
We need progressive tax reform based on the ability to pay, tax reform that will shift the load off working families and put it on those reaping the profits from our resources - the corporations and the wealthy.
In December 2010, the Liberal Finance Minister Colin Hansen said, "We have reduced taxes to some of the lowest levels in the country, and when combined with planned federal tax rate cuts, by 2012, the corporate income tax rate in BC will be the lowest of the G-7 nations." In the 1960s, the corporations paid 50 cents of every tax dollar in Canada. Now they pay pennies and the working people pay more and more.
The Communist Party of British Columbia calls for urgent measures to win progressive tax reform:
* Axe the HST as a first step in the elimination of the GST and PST.
* Reverse the Campbell Liberal corporate tax cuts, which cost the treasury over $800 million annually.
* Restore the corporation capital tax.
* Introduce wealth and inheritance on estates over $500,000.
* Eliminate taxes on incomes under $35,000.
It is time to put BC back to work, using a reformed tax base to build affordable housing, provide publicly-financed post secondary education, do away with MSP premiums, increase education funding and attack the child poverty and homelessness that is a stain on this province.
The Communist Party of British Columbia urges a strong YES vote to "axe the tax" and defeat the HST!
(Issued by the Communist Party of British Columbia, cp.info@gmail.com, 604-254-9836)
(The above article is from the June 16-30, 2011, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)