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[Canada] Politics of the Democratic Friedmanite Republic of the Government of Harper
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LOL, HST is a good thing, it was wrong to promise the electorate they wouldnt implement it, but it saves the government money and simplifies the tax code for businesses. Only the peanut gallery thinks its a bad thing.
Actually, all those people who voted in the referendum against the tax thought it was a bad idea. I don't want to quibble, but it was a majority of voters.
They laid off those workers and re hired them so they would fall under not crazy contracts which the npd drafted up. Yes, under handed, but the ndp throw around too much cash.
Uhg, majority voted down hst, yes. And if California taught us anything, majority votes on taxes works so well. That just means thee majority of teachers who want more money voted down the hst, and are still complaining. People are terrible at financing, they shouldn't direct government taxation.
Ps on my phone, apologies for scatter brained-ness.
It seems really silly to vote for a less efficient government and, ultimately, higher prices for goods and services because you're angry about being lied to.
Also, I'd argue that letting a government know that it won't always get away with lying to the public, is something that is important for democracy.
HST may very well have been a good thing, but the government specifically said during their election campaign that they were not even considering it, denied having had any discussions with the federal government about it, and then introduced it under 2 months later. In other words, they lied about a major change to the tax code during their campaign. That is absolutely unacceptable, and the bastards need to be thrown out so we can teach politicians that it is not acceptable to lie to us. It would have been nice to be able to keep HST, but the message was more important. Oh, and HST did not lead to lower prices in any way. You should know by now that trickle down is nothing but a lie thrown around by conservatives to justify their greed.
Slo, I've never seen you before. Please tell me exactly how the NDP throws around too much cash. Is it by paying government workers enough to live on? Is it by not illegally legislating unions back to work? Is it by investing in our education and hiring enough teachers to adequately staff our school?
You do know how things like that work, right? The prices don't drop overnight. Especially when people in the province immediately start making a stink about it and hold a referendum to repeal it less than a year after implementation. But, don't let facts get in the way of your ideology.
You're actually arguing that even though we didn't see a change in the price of goods a year after HST came in, if we'd just waited longer, it would have happened? And you actually believe that? How about you loan me a few grand, and I'll pay it back in a month or two. Oh, it might actually be a year, or maybe 5. Just trust me, you'll get it back eventually.
Business almost NEVER pass on any cost decreases to consumers. If you believe otherwise you're insane. Also, HST really hurt some businesses like restaurants, which were PST exempt before the HST. The cost to visit a restaurant actually went UP by about 7% because of HST and business for them dropped off significantly.
I believe the point is that a small business owner isn't going to lower prices by 8% for a year and then re-raise them a year later if the HST gets repealed. Large businesses are a different issue, what with their being national or multi-national, such that the taxation change in a particular province might not even register as something that would induce a price change, particularly if the prices are consistent across Canada. For both, they're unlikely to lower prices for at least a year, after which they can redo their books and the initial drop-off in business as a result of the HST levels off (since people can't protest it by not buying things forever, or until it's repealed).
Also, I'm pretty sure Walmart does.
Without that information, saying they should have already changed or they didn't change yet is meaningless.
I don't see why it matters when it was announced. Business can't pass savings on to customers until those savings have been realized, so the HST could've been announced 100 years ago and it wouldn't make a damn bit of difference. Secondly, since the repeal movement began right when (or possibly before) the merger was instituted, most businesses would adopt a "wait and see" attitude before changing their prices. Which turned out to be a good plan since the HST was repealed via referendum. There's now no point in lowering prices since they'd just have to raise them again when the taxes split.
There are a limited number of things a business can do when its operating costs decrease: It can pass the excess profits to the owners, invest them back into the company, or lower the cost of goods and services. If that third one happens in even a single case, the consumer gets lower prices. And even if it doesn't, extra profits for the owners and investment into the businesses ARE BOTH GOOD THINGS FOR THE PROVINCE. Besides, in at least three provinces the savings were passed on to consumers to at least some extent, so your "almost NEVER" point is total bullshit.
The effect on bars and restaurants is regrettable, but it has little to do with the lowering of operating costs. They were essentially operating with a competitive advantage not granted to businesses that had to charge PST, and they suffered when the playing field was leveled. The consumer dollars that they lost would go elsewhere in the economy, though, so while bad for some sectors, the HST is good for others. I would expect the accounting profession to suffer as well.
I'm not necessarily saying the HST was a good thing. I'm just saying it's a lot more complicated than, "prices didn't go down and some businesses went under!" Those things might have happened anyways, or been even worse. I mean, the general problem of Canadian prices not going down when our currency went up is well known; there are other forces beyond just supply and demand at play here.
Could you please explain how this article is wrong about how the tax burden is shifted around?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/story/2009/03/27/f-tax-faq.html
Specifically, sections like the following:
This seems to indicate that consumers pay extra and corporations pay less... pretty much the definition of a shifting of the tax burden. How is this understanding of the tax system incorrect?
A corporate tax is a distinctly different form of tax than a sales tax.
Please. Are you seriously implying I'm some sort of right-wing neo-con?
It says what I said, but adds in that some items that were formerly exempt under 1 tax, are no longer exempt, so some items will have increased taxation. So its up to the government to decide what items need to be completely exempt from tax, and which ones dont need to be exempt, instead of a hodgepodge of some items were exempt from PST but not GST or vice versa.
No, I'm not trying to imply you are a neo-con. I'm just trying to figure out why people are saying that this is a good tax policy change for consumers? The consumers see increased costs, and if the past few years have been any indication corporations don't tend to increase their spending due to reduced taxes to a noticeable degree, or pass along tax savings to the consumer.
I wouldn't profess to have proof that it does in this case, BUT a sales tax is a decidedly different beast than a corporate tax to a business - and we are talking businesseshere, and not so much corporations, since the HST change is not size-dependent. For example, on the flip side, (I believe that) we know that an increase in sales tax is more likely to deter consumer spending than an increase in their income tax. The converse might be true vis a vis decreases for producers and providers?
I really would think that small businesses, particularly those that are struggling, would lower their prices after an HST implementation, given enough time and confidence. A big corporation might not, but as a small business owner, I'd probably prefer the extra business over the 4-5% extra revenue,though, depending on my typical profit margin, the % of that might be much higher.... Still, I'd be rather unlikely to consider that a windfall and splurge on a vacation home or something.
What does, generally, force them to do so is competition. (ie - since you can afford to drop the price of X by $20 now, you do so in order to get more customers and increase your overall profits) And that's dependant on the specific market.
And I said earlier that I wasn't arguing that HST was bad, I was arguing that it had to go because of they way it was brought in. The message was more important than any benefits from the tax. I was also calling bullshit on Gnome's ridiculous claims. I don't think he even lives here, so how the hell would he know what prices have been doing?
Come on now. They had an entire year to plan for the changes and anticipate the different costs and change their pricing; they didn't lower prices. Even though there was a legal challenge, they knew they would have well over a year of lowered cost of doing business. If they really wanted to, that's plenty of time to pass on any savings. You're essentially arguing that corporations should never lower prices in response to tax breaks because one day, years down the road, the tax might go back up. Now, that's what corporations actually do in the real world, but you're arguing that in this special case they would have if we'd just been nice enough to them. Let's just "wait and see" because next month the economy might go in the shitter or a war might break out and we never know when we'll need those $500,000,000,000 that we have stockpiled.
Fuck the corporations. Giving them tax breaks does fuck all for consumers. It almost always has done, and I see no reason for that to change.
Also, prices do respond to changes in tax burden. It's just a matter of how quickly and how much.
And finally, if businesses were expecting taxes to go back up soon, they would probably hold off lowering prices. There's a very real, very tangible difference between "taxes might go up again some day" and "taxes might go up again next year due to the current political climate".
Why would they make changes within a couple of months?
They could have, and might have made changes by now if the petition to repeal the HST hadn't been filed four days after it was first implemented. They don't necessarily want to lower prices, though. Market forces make them do it. Just because it didn't happen fast enough for your tastes does not change the fact that it does happen, as evidenced by the implementation of this very same tax change in three other provinces fifteen or so years ago.
To be reckless and risk your business? Many businesses work on annual cycles - like toy stores. While a toy store COULD change their prices in the middle of November following the introduction of an HST*, the havoc a misadjustment could wreak on the Christmas season could kill the store. But similarly, you don't want to make a change in March, potentially sparking a price war with your competitors, while having no idea as to how such a change plays out come the holiday season, because you have no data on it at all.
Another reason for lag is that these businesses are not wholly independent of one another. They interact with one another in supply chains. If my supplier doesn't lower her/his price, how can I lower mine?
* I don't recall when the HST was actually introduced. Just an example.
Your political insights into the HST are basically useless and without merit.
Signed,
The people of BC
When the HST was introduced, two things happened. First, the BC Liberals cut the corporate taxation rate yet again. Second, the PST ceased to exist, and all of its rules and deductions and so on were abolished. In a number of areas, including for restaurant food but also children's clothing, prices immediately went up 7%.
While at the same time the corporate tax rate was reduced. That is a taxation shift, I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise. It may be preferable, or it may be not; but it still is a shift. Along with being lied to during an election campaign, that is the reason why such a large percentage of the electorate voted against the tax. They saw no economic benefit to it for themselves, which is the very definition of economic self interest, which is supposed to be the thing which all of us base our decisions on.
Or are you, dear thread posters, suggesting that people not simply look at their own narrow economic interest? Shocking.
Of course, that is exactly what we're saying.
Don't be a tool.
I'm not entirely sure why I need to consider the immediate economic well being of others, especially businesses when they don't do the same for me.
That's what I'm trying to get at. There is no reciprocity. The HST may have been "better" for businesses in that value added taxes generally cost firms less, but that ignores the very real price increases regular people got stuck with as a result of harmonization. Two competing interests; who should win out? Well, we've had over a decade of a government who thinks that business, especially large business should have its interests attended to first and foremost. People get tired of that, and got especially angry over the HST.
Moreover, the way most of you thread posters write about BC politics convinces me that you are generally living somewhere to the east of the Rockies. The political culture is very different here, very polarized, and very much based on economic class divisions. If you actually go and look at the distribution of votes for killing the HST versus against killing it, you'll notice that pretty much all the affluent areas voted to keep the tax, while poorer areas in both urban and rural BC voted to kill it.
You can wave all sorts of economic equations in front of people, but that still won't negate or in anyway lessen the impact of a person's individual experience. Unlike other taxes like user fees or even income tax, the HST is in your face every single day. I still remember the day that the price of drinks went up at Tim Horton's, and a lot of folks do too. You can ignore that if you want, I guess, but it just will expose how completely out of touch you are with the way politics actually works.
I have not once actually mentioned BC, a BC politician, BC voters, or a BC political party in the past page or so. We're arguing with psyk0 about HSTs, which have also been implemented here in Ontario, where, quite frankly, nobody really seems to give a shit any more. I am personally not pro-HST, and I think Caedwyr brings up a good point re. the overall tax burden, but I'm mostly responding to psyk0's shitty points. I'm not sure anybody's even talking about BC in particular any more. The last oblique reference to BC was CorporateGoon, some 30 posts ago:
And again, more about HST than BC really.
I'm honestly really surprised. I don't think Horwath would've let the government fall, but shit, I'm not gonna complain.