January 20, 2010

Correcting the record on business taxes

The following letter was published in the Vancouver Sun:

B.C.’s Minister for Small Business, Iain Black, is wrong when he says, in this business-section article from the Financial Post, that when the B.C. Liberals took office in 2001, the province had the highest small-business tax rate in the country. In fact, it was the lowest. Between 1999 and 2001, the New Democrat government of the day cut the business tax rate from nine per cent to 4.5 per cent.

Black also misleadingly claims that the B.C. Liberals created Straightforward B.C., a government department aimed at streamlining and deregulation. What it did was change the name of a New Democrat program that worked with business to streamline government regulations and procedures. Now the B.C. Liberals are pushing forward with the harmonized sales tax, a regressive new tax that will harm small business in the province. Tourism operators stand to lose 10,000 jobs and $545 million in revenues; the restaurant industry is campaigning hard to stop the tax, which it says will cost it $750 million a year. These are small businesses the B.C. Liberals have chosen to ignore.

Jenny Kwan
Opposition Critic for Small Business, Technology and Economic Development