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Government trying to blame HST victims

Dear editor, Mr. Presley seems quite anxious to sell the HST as a good thing but he and others can’t really explain why this is so.

Dear editor,

Mr. Presley seems quite anxious to sell the HST as a good thing but he and others can’t really explain why this is so.

I have listened to business people complain that calculating two taxes is time consuming and they would rather record one number.  I take from this that I should pay an additional $350 a year to save them some time and aggravation.

When this tax was introduced we were told that it would be revenue neutral. Now it is a mere $350 a year more — negligible really! And by the way, judging from how much more it is costing my household since the HST came into effect, I think $350 must be a conservative estimate.

What I rarely hear anyone say is that more items and services carry both taxes (GST and PST) than they did prior to the combined HST.  In other words, things that were not taxable before are now included — hence the now-acknowledged increase in dollars per family.

The reduction of HST to 10 per cent in the future is an obvious smokescreen.

The bottom line is that the government, in arrogance, tried to fool the people. They made a mistake and now they would like to blame the victims by alluding to our inability to understand the finer points (You just don’t get it!).

In the mental health industry, that is known as emotional abuse.  Deborah Joyce,

Comox