Early last week, Jonathan Fowlie noted in his blog for the Vancouver Sun that Kamloops-South Thompson MLA Kevin Krueger ( who also serves as co-chair of the Small Business Roundtable ) and Finance Minister Kevin Falcon had found themselves in disagreement on how best to handle provincial taxation post-HST:
Krueger explained the proposal the following way during an address to the Legislature:
"You know, I recognize who won the fight over HST. We lost. The people who were opposed won. We honestly believed that it was the best thing for British Columbia’s economy, but we didn’t win. But we can collaborate on a way to deal with the problem, because the member’s right. That’s what I hear all the time now from small business: “You got to find a way to get back the HST or something like it that was good for us.”"What they mean by that is the joint tax collection system, because there still are 80 percent of the goods and services that have 5 percent GST, 7 percent PST. We don’t have to combine them. If we can get the federal government to continue to collect them jointly, we can save them all of that administrative overburden, and they won’t have to pay $1,200 apiece for new cash registers."The idea raised a few eyebrows, mostly given the technical complexity of such a move. So what did Finance Minister Kevin Falcon think of the idea? He responded just over an hour later, saying:"That’s not something that the federal government has expressed any support for, so unfortunately that’s not an option for us."After hearing of Falcon’s comments, Krueger continued to support the idea: “It seems to me, and it may be overly simplistic, it seems to me a reasonable solution that we just continue to collect the sales taxes jointly for our share of it,” he told reporters Monday afternoon.“They [Ottawa] are going to collect their GST regardless, they have our tax collectors, they could collect our PST and continue to do the job for us.”When asked if he had talked to Falcon on the issue, Krueger seemed to signal that he was airing the idea in the legislature because the finance minister wouldn’t respond in person.
Read the whole thing here.
Kevin Krueger might not be the most favored member of the BC Liberal administration at the moment because of his involvement in the Boss Power scandal, which might help explain some of Kevin Falcon's reluctance to engage. That being said, Krueger's idea could have some merit. It will be interesting to see if the Liberal camp gives it due consideration - or if it decides to kill Krueger's idea dead as soon as they can so as not to look like they're playing around with something that they got decidedly squashed on just a few months ago.
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