No, higher income earners end up paying far more relative to the rest of the population, even with being able to write off business expenses. So you could argue that they simply have a better understanding of taxes and business, which may be why they are higher income earners.Thats probably because PERB is more than likely inhabited by males from middle and upper class incomes, with probably a large number of male business owners with disposable income to drop on escorts. This particular class of person, probably of which there are many posting in this thread may see this tax as a windfall because now they get to deduct 12% on their wide spread of so called business expenses rather than the 5% under the previous system and they are loathe to give that up .
Well, if it is a tax shift, then it's a tax that a consumer was paying anyways, mostly by high income earners, since the cost of running a business is part of what makes the price on a product. Unless you think that businesses somehow don't include overhead expenses in their business models.And now that medium and large size businesses can write that tax off, someone else has to make up the shortfall. Thus the tax shifts more to the average salaried working stiff who devoid of writeoffs has to ante up more hard earned cash. Low income earners do get GST rebates but because the HST tentacles spread to so many new areas its a pittance compared to what it really cost them.
Low income earners all come out ahead with the HST rebates because they just don't pay very much in HST to begin with.
It's not even philosophical; it's based on studies of the affect of VAT's in other jurisdictions. Just because you're not familiar with the studies, doesn't mean they don't exist.You can believe all that philosophical crap about creating more jobs in the future but there will be no absolute way to quantify whether it really happens or not.
So people who are voting Yes because it's hitting them personally in the pocket are being unfairly accused of being selfish; but then the people who are voting No are doing so because you claim that it's going back to GST/PST to hit them personally in the pocket, i.e. they're being “selfish”. This is nothing more than baseless mudslinging.What is real is the immediate impact in the pocket book of middle to low income wage earners who are living paycheque to paycheque battling to survive on minimal or no annual pay increases while the gas companies and the government take an ever increasing share of their earnings.
And of course someone in this thread calls them selfish.
I would suspect that a lot of those supporting the HST in this thread are not really as interested in the longterm "benefits" to the province as much as how it actually benefits them personally.