Hello Fellow Ontario Taxpayers,
This new RST/GST tax is not getting any coverage in the news paper/television and I am not sure why. It is going to be the biggest tax increase in history. It's like no one wants to inform us of the facts. I have been investigating and I would like to share my findings.
The new tax will be administered by the Federal Government. It will be based on the GST, that means if the tax is currently collected on the Goods and Service Tax at 5% it is going to be increased to 13%, that sounds fine as Ontario's Provincial Retail Sales Tax is 8%. Add the two together and things seem fine.
One problem, Retail Sales Tax is not collected on everything that Goods and Services Tax is, the key word here is "Services". Retail Sales Tax is not collected on services. What is going to increase?
Here is a small list of services currently only taxed at 5% going up to 13%.
Natural Gas bill
Internet bill
Water bill
Gas at the pumps- That is like 6 cents per L. (that is a tax on top of a tax)
Hair cut
Massage therapy
Anything that requires labour around your house- plumber, electrician, painting, grass cutting ext.
Electricity bill- This is a good one. Look at your electricity bill there is a charge on it for debt retirement charge. That is a charge for the huge debt the OPC ran up. Only in Ontario would we pay tax on a debt, and only in Ontario would we increase this tax.
This is just a small list as there is so much much more.
Let talk about small business for a minute.
Mr. Mcguinty tells us in the budget that this new tax is going to save small businesses 500 million dollars. I do not know how much it costs to fill out a six line tax return monthly, but all small business owners I know do there own. If you are in business you will know about compensation on your Retail Sales Tax return. This is when you get to keep 5% of the tax collected up to $1,500.00 per year to help with your administration costs. That is gone once this tax is combined. Really it only helps large corporations with multiple vendor permit numbers, not small businesses.
Good news, I thought. There were two places where we were going to see an advantage to this tax. First there is no GST on used cars if bought privately and provincial tax on alcohol in between 10% to 12%. That is 2% to 4% higher then our normal Retail Sales Tax. Good old Mcguinty took care of that real quick. He is now saying to make it fair between used car lots, that he will collect the Retail Sales Tax on used cars still. Get ready for this one, he is going to add a levy on alcohol to promote social responsibility. This man is using the words social responsibility at the same time as he is raising our taxes, what he promised not to do.
I never forward chain letters and this is more or less what this is. This one has a reason, it could save you a lot of money over your lifetime. Please forward it to everyone in your contact list and call them and ask them to forward it.
I have added a few links at the bottom if you would like to send an e-mail. The first one is to sign the petition against this tax. The second is to Mcguinty if you would like to talk to him about being socially responsible. There are a few other ones but the bottom one is the best, it is the salary disclosure for 2008. We are paying him $207,000.00 per year to lie to us.
Stand up Ontario and tell him we cannot afford any more Mcguinty politics. No new taxes.
Please sign the petition.
Thanks
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/Stop_HST_Ontario/signatures-10.html -Petition
https://www.premier.gov.on.ca/feedback/feedback.asp - Dalton Mcguinty
https://www.ontario.ca/en/contacts/feedback/index.htm -Any questions to the
Provincial Government
http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/english/about/contactus/feedback.html Dwight Duncan
http://www.ontarioliberal.ca/contact.aspx The Ontario Liberal Party
http://www.ontariopc.com/home20/contactus/contactus.aspx The PC Party of Ontario
http://www.fin.gov.on.ca/english/publications/salarydisclosure/2009/ministries09.html Salary Disclosure
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ReplyDeleteHeather,
ReplyDeleteWhere were you when the GST came into force all those years ago? Alot of the same arguments that you make here were made then.
What your argument, and a lot of others, fail to mention is that with the new taxation system, the sales tax that manufacturers and distributors have to pay today will disappear. Any sales tax that they pay, they will get back as a credit. This ultimately means that their costs will go down. When that happens, their price to the consumer will go down, so the HST we pay will be on a lesser amount.
I agree, there will be taxes on things that we have not been taxed before, but I think that once it all fleshes out, we should not be out of pocket any more than we are today.
From a business point of view, the administrative work will be less with one tax.
While I am not a McGinty fan, I think that HST is a good thing. It's a long time coming.
By the way, this is a done deal. No petition is going to change this.
Fuimus
Oops! I posted this one under my own userid because Evelyn sent it and asked me to.
ReplyDeleteWhen the GST came to force in '91...I was still in school. At that point I didn't pay any attention to what it was all about, I just remember being miffed that costs were going up. I worked in retail at the time, so I heard a lot about it from customers too.
If memory serves the GST was a Bob Rae deal, wasnt' it? "Rae Days" and all that.
This article http://www.citynews.ca/news/news_33244.aspx mentions that the HST will cut costs for businesses, but no further details are provided.
I'll have to do some reading and find out more about it!
And to Anonymouse at 5:51 pm yesterday - I'll see if I can find some direct links that are not so convoluted.
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ReplyDelete"You should let people know that to sign the petition they will have to pay an american company at least $2.00"
ReplyDeleteI just checked it out....the donation is 'voluntary' but the signature is counted before you get to the donation section.
GST was an initiative of the Brian Mulroney Conservative government. Bob Rae screwed up the province in other ways.....
ReplyDeleteGST was an effort to move the tax burden to the consumer and eliminate the multiple layers of taxation in the supply chain. At the time, there were other countries with "VAT" or Value Added Taxes (like the UK). The removal of the Manufacturers' Sales Tax which was a Federal tax, meant that more items would be taxable but at a lower rate and on a broader spectrum of items. The phrase that was used at the time was "Revenue Neutral". Meaning that the change should not change the amount of tax the government receives and the consumer should not pay any more tax than before.
In fact, when the original legislation came out, EVERYTHING was taxable. They made some things "zero rated" which meant that their tax rate was 0%.
At the time, the provinces were encouraged to jump on board with a harmonized sales tax. The maritime provinces and Quebec did.
The uproar at the time was that now the consumer saw the tax that they were paying on their receipts. Prior to that, they had no idea how much tax was built into the product's cost.
The Liberals campaigned that if they were elected, they would remove the GST. Sheila Copps in fact pledged that she would resign if they did not remove it.
I recall that they were elected a couple of times..... we still have the GST.
I applaude the provincial government for finally getting on board with HST. The media likes to dwell on the negatives, but I think in the long run, this is a positive step.
Fuimus