Wednesday, April 07, 2010

A brief response

So the main response to the a Nova Scotia NDP budget which necessarily changes the provincial financial picture from the one Rodney MacDonald claimed to the one Darrell Dexter actually found seems to be "if you were really against the HST, you wouldn't run to govern a province where we imposed it!!!1!eleven!"

Needless to say, I don't see the spin as deserving of much rebuttal. But suffice it to say that there's a huge difference between making an unnecessary choice to change a provincial tax structure to relieve corporations of the obligation to pay consumption taxes while increasing the burden on citizens, and making needed changes to increase revenue in the near term when the machinery to enforce a broader sales tax has been trashed over a decade ago. And indeed that's in part exactly why provincial governments shouldn't be secretive and dishonest about the consequences of eliminating that capacity in the first place.

(Edit: fixed wording.)

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