Tim hortons order pre HST $2.80 . Now $2.98. thought that companies were going to pass down there savings because they will be saving so much money with HST. Guess the only savings will be me cutting back on restaurants and pubs. Thanks GORDO and LIBERALS. thanks for listening to the people.

Canada day food also have HST??

I bought stamps by chance yesterday and was told I just saved myself $4 per roll. So, I bought 4 rolls instead of 2. It amazes me how so many people still don't get how much this is going to cost them. Directly, right out of our pockets and into the government coffers. It's nothing but another tax grab. And don't count on prices dropping or a rebate. Those of us who foot the bills won't qualify for anything.

There will be consequences to the decisions our local MLA's have made. It's too bad they think they know what is best for us and have chosen to ignore our opinions and feelings.

We have been pretty active on compalining about our BC government on this tax....We all see to forget that our Canadian government is going to gain a huge amount as well...where were our federal representatives when all this was taking place???

I'll just do with buying a lot less stuff! That way I get even. As long as the basic necessities of life are still relatively affordable I am just fine.

People have choices!

One thing that will be canceled is the Cable TV subscription. I am already getting all the information I need from the internet.

Next, the newspaper. Next item on the list is an electric car! No gasoline to buy, no oil changes, no antifreeze changes, no muffler replacement, no automatic transmission fluid changes...no carbon tax...plenty of savings to more than offset the few extra dollars imposed by the HST!

The consumer has a lot of choices! Grow some of your own vegetables!

Don't get mad, get even! Think positive! Don't worry, be happy!

Happy Canada Day!

HST- the How we Screw the people Tax.
Today is the beginning of even MORE on-line cross border shopping (cheaper prices even with exchange and shipping)delivered to my door.
The end of magazine subscriptions, more online bill paying, no more charitable donations because that extra $500 its going to cost me yearly to keep me afloat has to come from somewhere.Going out for dinner and a show are going to be special occasion only and forget about tipping.
Still have to work so a vehicle is necessary but we've been getting screwed over on the price of gas so long that its hardly noticeable.
If you didn't sign the petition, then don't complain.We need to withold our "consumerism". I'm tired of pay,pay,and pay some more.

Let the recall petitions start!

I was expecting to see a higher cost but the price of gas is up to $108.0 (1.1 cents) now wonder how long it will be until that .0 gets bumped up to .9 ?

250 News says "That means you will now be adding 7% to the cost of just about everything with the exception of most grocery food items.

That is totally incorrect. Almost everything you bought before today was hit with 12% tax. The cost of buying a car, fridge, tv, boots, golf clubs, bbq, house (unless it costs you more than $500,000), etc... is exactly the same. Actually they will all come down in price due to the tax savings and administrative cost reductions for the businesses that sell these things.

The only things going up are some consumer goods and services like Tim Hortons, pubs, relator fees, etc. The tax on theses items will be partially offset by the tax savings and administrative cost reductions for these businesses.

well kolberg you enjoy paying all that extra money to the government there are at least 700,000 people in this province who don't agree with you

are you serious Kolberg. What company do you know that will pass on savings to there customers.(well there might end up being one or two). Thanks to this hst i will be paying an extra 400 dollars to my roof that just decided to start leaking. That is 400 dollars i wont be spending with any company or services, that four hundred goes now to the federal government.

recall time. this should happen no matter what, even if by some miracle the liberals decide to get rid of the hst.

Thanks Gordon Campbell!Love ya! Hugs and kisses to you and your liberal cabinet today especially!NOT!!Hope your having a really shitty day,you wretched,piece of pond scum!Oh well,I feel better now,and can continue on celebrating Canada Day!And thankyou to all the soldiers and their families for allowing us to celebrate today,with the freedoms we have!I will play the song "Highway of Heroes" today in honour of all our soldiers,and this great country we live in!

are you serious Kolberg. What company do you know that will pass on savings to there customers.(well there might end up being one or two). Thanks to this hst i will be paying an extra 400 dollars to my roof that just decided to start leaking. That is 400 dollars i wont be spending with any company or services, that four hundred goes now to the federal government.

recall time. this should happen no matter what, even if by some miracle the liberals decide to get rid of the hst.

Kolberg. Wake up and smell the flowers. If you click on the article above it gives you a list of what the HST applies on and what it doesnt apply on. Have a look and get a better understanding of this tax.

The only problem with the list is that it was put out by the Liberal Government, and of course they left off about 30 items so that it wouldnt look so bad.

Read it and weep.

Have a nice day.

Oh well it could be worse, Gordo could still be running the province...oh wait he is...crap,crap,crap.

Kolberg is right, that sentence is completely misleading. It fits in with all of the "sky is falling" rhetoric. It makes it sound like the hst is being added without mentioning that we have been paying PST on 99% of this stuff before. Really people, if you are living so close to bankruptcy that this is going to break you then you need to look at your life anway. I suspect that those people saying they won't eat out or won't tip now were probably pretty chitty tippers before this. The people beakin off about the kids clothes exemption probably don't have kids - I've got a housefull of them and I have never said "wow good thing I don't have to pay pst on these clothes or we would never make it!". Get real, once this is in place and people realize its not the big bad wolf the whole recall thing will die. If the yappers spoke even half of the truth instead of fear mongering than this would be a non issue. Flame on

r_u_serious

Your roofer now doesn't have to pay 7% PST on the shingles, plywood, nails, etc. He also doesn't have to pay PST next time he buys a truck, hammer, saw, etc. Yes you will now have to pay 12% instead of 5% on his labour but you were already going to pay 12% on all the materials. Plust before you were going to pay 5% GST on the 7% PST that was built into the price. I agree that you will pay more now in total, but only about 3% more, not 7%.

The home reno business is very competetive. Customers are price sensitive. Any roofer that does not pass on his HST savings to his customer will soon be out of business.

Palupo

I know the list. I have read it again as you suggested. More than half the items on it were already 12% tax. Almost all big ticket items were already 12%.

Also, all the items that were already 12% will eventually come down in price as businesses pass their tax savings and lower administrative burden onto consumers.

Within a year or two you will be paying less in total on almost everything you buy. Not a lot, maybe 1 or 2%.

There are some things that will cost more in total. For example. Coffee, fast food, driving range fees, etc. you will be paying around 5% more. Home renos you will be paying about 3% more.

To everyone who is on my case for being in favour of the HST.

I don't like paying tax. I want all levels of government to tax us less. I want all levels of government to stop wasting our tax money. I don't like Campbell.

However the HST is a better tax system than the GST/PST combo it is replacing.

Zalm doesn't care about you. He just likes being in the spotlight. Don't you remember how much you hated him when you booted him out of office and how happy you were went the Social Credit party closed up shop?

With fiscal prudence, we wouldn't need an HST

The B.C. Liberals and their supporters tell us, "We need the harmonized sales tax. The government has a big deficit and debt. How else will we pay for government programs?"

Now, imagine if you had those same problems in your family. Would it do any good to go to your employer and say, "I need more pay to take care of my debts and deficits and my many needs."?

We recently heard about an MP spending more money in one year, travelling first-class between Surrey and Ottawa, than the average family has to live on for 15 years.

Our own premier, seeking a diversion from the HST, decided to announce the building of the Site C dam (in 10 years, maybe) -- not from his Victoria office but at the dam site, flying himself, his entourage and the media in five hired Learjets. When the premier, his ministers and our MLAs gave themselves and their bureaucrats huge pay increases just before trying to introduce a cruel new tax that hurt poor people most, it didn't instil much confidence, either.

Bill Vander Zalm

Ladner

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/With+fiscal+prudence+wouldn+need/3223563/story.html

Kolberg. You really miss the point.

Why would the Government give you a huge list of things that the HST doesnt apply on. We already know what was subject to GST and PST.

This is just a smoke screen, and if you took a little time you would see it makes no sense at all.

What we want from the Government is truth.

1. What does the HST apply on and how much will it cost the average consumer per year.

2. How much additional money will the Governments Provincial and Federal make per year from this added tax.

3. Because this is a tax shift from Big Business and Corporations to consumers, how much money will Big Business and Consumers save, and how much more will consumers pay to make up the difference.

4. If the economy picks up, and the Government starts to collect more money, can we expect this tax to be reduced overall by 2 or 4 percentage points in the next few years, or is it the intention of the Government to keep it at 12% or increase it.

I doubt very much that we would get an honest answer to any of these questions.

Insofar as Vander Zalm goes, at least he got off his ass, and got this petition going. He's paid more attention to BC Citizens in the last 6 Months than the Liberals have in the last 6 years.

There are hundreds of thousands of people in this Province that would love to have a Social Credit Government back in this Province. The so called Liberals and NDP, are about the worst bunch of also ran, ner do wells, ever located in one spot.

The Liberals were kicked out of BC Provincial Politics in the late 40's or early 50's because they were corrupt. We should have kept them out.

Kolberg, how can the HST be a "better tax system than the GST/PST combo it is replacing" when it ADDS 7% MORE in cost to every BC consumer on a whole range of things not now taxed at all under PST?

If you're swallowing the official line that it'll "eventually" lead to lower consumer prices, you're dreaming in technicolour.

By the time "eventually" comes to pass labour will have demanded, and received, wage increases to try to stay even with where they were before the HST, Carbon Tax, and all the other litany of new taxes and fees that have come from Campbell's Liberals. Which will really only succeed in raising prices still further. Just look back at all the new or raised tax impositions from a Premier who was first elected under the slogan "Tax cuts work!"

They do. But it's WE, the ordinary people of BC, that have to receive them. And this government is going the other way.

And the only thing that made many of us "happy" when the Social Credit Party "closed up shop" was that all the Liberals who couldn't get elected under that moniker, and pulled a reverse takeover of the original Social Credit League that WAC Bennett headed for so many years, went back to operating under their true colours. Now we can see them for what they really are, and always have been.

palupud - do you even read your spewings? You have to be in politics for your rantings with no point to be listened to.
As for your list:
1. it applies on what the list shows. I could go into detail but if you cant be bothered to read up on it than whatever. It is not a secret though.
2. According to YOUR own ranting they will make nothing more - you have been screaming that this is only a tax shift for long enough that most of PG is sick of hearing from you
3. oh wait.... you are answering number two yourself...
4. who knows? the gst has come down over time, perhaps this will too.

ps - Im not even necessarily for the HST, Im just so sick of the anti HST crowd that Im starting to like it...

Interceptor:- "4. who knows? the gst has come down over time, perhaps this will too."
-------------------------------------------

Not likely. The government's bankers like this kind of taxation. They allowed lowering the
GST a couple of percentage points as a carrot on a stick for Harper to try to get a majority government. Didn't work, yet.

These taxes remove 'tangible' purchasing power from the general public to make those larger interest payments on increased government indebtedness. For 'stimulus' spending, and such like. Those perpetual debts that are never "paid off", just continually "rolled over"
into new, larger ones.

Since every dollar that's removed in taxation from the public this way is a dollar that's already been 'costed' into the price of some good or service, this puts the public further in hock to the Banks to access those goods and services at the price of their making, if they need and want them, but increasingly can't afford them without recourse to additional consumer credit. The HST is just digging a deeper financial hole for all of us as citizens.

The provincial portion of the HST will be lowered to 5% prior to the election in May 2013.

Unlikely, my2bits. Gordo could have diffused a lot of the opposition to the HST by doing that now. The tax itself, despite what we've been told, is highly unlikely to be 'revenue neutral'. If it were, there wouldn't have been such a rush to introduce it, and it could've been brought in much more honestly.

kolberg: As a manager of a business I fully understand what you are saying. The average person doesn't have a clue how much they pay in tax and never will.

"The home reno business is very competetive. Customers are price sensitive. Any roofer that does not pass on his HST savings to his customer will soon be out of business."

LOL .... LOL ... LOL ...

Are you sure you aren't a carney barker...

cougs78 .....

When it comes to construction, unless you are using some very high priced equipment compared to the hours it takes to put in that equipment, at least half of the cost of building something is labour. Then there is the office overhead, plus the profit.

Neither the labour, office overhead, nor profit mark-up were taxed by PST before, although part of the office overhead, for those who do their cost accounting properly may have been.

Now there is a 7% additional tax being paid on those three by customers. None of that can be reclaimed by the contractor from anyone. That, is the value added by the contractor and rmember, the HST is a value added tax and that tax is being collected by the contractor on behalf of the government and the contractor will have to pass it on to the government.

So go pull the wool over someone else's eyes.

Cheap asphalt roofing shingles?

1. best job is to take existing shingles off ... ALL labour other than the dumping fee, all now gets an additional 7% on it that goes to the government.
2. shingles and nails are less than the labour, estimate, overhead, profit of putting the new roof on. At least 60%+ of the replacing part of the job will be "added value" labour, etc.

I would be glad to hear from a professional roofer to tell me what that figure might be. The whole picture changes if one goes with expensive tiles or metal sheets.

Wanna do some landscaping? Likely the same scenario. Can be very labour intensive. Wanna do some electrical work? Likely the same again.

Carepentry, drywalling, all the same as above.

Wanna replace your old furnace with a high energy efficient furnace? There would be an example where labour would be the lesser cost.

Gus: You can pay it if you want. Their are ways to midigate this and any any other tax, and they are all legal. I would explain it to you but by reading your post I think you have a bit of knowledge on accounting. If you do you, you already have it figured out and should be off that treadmill. If you don't then you better start your research today.

Thanks for that thought cougs78.

Yes, if you know what you are doing or have a large enough business to have a good bookkeeper/accountant that knows the business, then you will very likely be paying less tax than a competing contractor who does not have the knowledge. If you are really good at it, you might actually draw the attention of Revenue Canada since your percentages may not match their tax payable factors based on revenues.

I am not in that business on the building contracting side, but was on the building design side which included estimating, payment certification, etc. But the same does hold for many other businesses, of course.

As far as the HST and "savings" being passed through, when it comes to smaller contractors they would not even know what their "savings" actually are. In my expereince, many work on the principle that the profit is the owner's pay, which, in practice, in many cases it is.

I doubt anything will be automatically passed through.

The French have tried to do the right thing when they started to put the equivalent of a PST on restaurant food. The restaurants had to show the pre-tax price and the post tax price. They got the restaurant industry to work with them on that before introducing the tax unilaterally as any government, of course, has the right to do.

The restaurant business here may also feel the brunt of the tax.

On the other hand, a friend of mine owns a restaurant in Ontario. Ontario has had a PST on their restaurant purchases before they took on the HST. She is happy since her bookkeeping and reporting will be easier once she has switched her accounting system over.

But, that is not the case on BC.

Agreed! Whether it is necessary or not the government has (as usual) done a poor job of consultation and introduction of this tax. Although I don't know if any tax is popular at any time regardless of how it is layed out!

And not a peep about the increased costs of managing your retirement money. Oh, well, that's in Ontario you say, not BC. Guess what, most Mutual fund companies have their head offices in Ontario and our investmetns are affected by the HST directly. But, our local elected representatives have chosen to keep their mouths shut about it.

The HST is a tax on the management fees of your retirement money and it will effect every investor in BC. By them not making this public is the same as lying. As I raised the issue with all of them months back. (Finance Minister, and all three Local MLA's) No comments, only an offer to meet to discuss it.

It's easy to print 9 pages of the items that aren't changing. I am most concerned about all of the ones that are and the ones that they haven't mentioned yet. How about postage? Add $4 to a roll of stamps. What else have they neglected to mention?

Interceptor. You should change your moniker to Interjector. In any event, I merely tried to show that the long extended list of what the HST doesnt apply on is just wasted space, because if it doesnt apply then it doesnt need to be explained.

As the old lady said. ^^wheres the beef^^
All we need are the facts. The Liberals have a hard time dealing with facts, mainly because they have little or no experience in that area.

I can oppose this tax because it is my money that they want to grab. For those of you who think that you have any involvement in this tax, I suggest that you explain to us the last time you talked to a Liberal MLA about the HST and what the discussion entailed. The truth of the matter is none of you were consulted on this tax.

This tax was dreamed up by Big Business and Corporations, and implemented by Campbell, and Hansen. The BC MLA's were only told about it after it was a fait accompli, and were told that they had to support it.

So for all you who support this tax, its time for you to realize that you are being used by the Government and Big Business to implement their program. In other words you are being SUCKERED.

Wake up and smell the roses. I know that they say that their is a sucker born every minute, but do you have to make it easy for them.

Brooklyn Bridge anyone?????

"the long extended list of what the HST doesnt apply on is just wasted space, because if it doesnt apply then it doesnt need to be explained"

The list is one which identifies exceptions to the rule. The HST applies to everyhting other than what is on the list. It is not there for explanation. It is there to regulate.