Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
That's not a given. They could make it exempt. I'll leave the math up to you, but even if we did pay a 5% PST, it would still be cheaper than a carbon tax in the vast majority of energy bills.
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I do the bookkeeping at my organization. We spend about $16,000 a year on GST taxable supplies and services. So a simple 5% PST makes for another $16,000 of expenses
We purchase about 70,000 litres of fuel. A 6 cent fuel tax would cost us about $4,200.
Utilities is harder to do off the top of my head. I budget $9000 a year for lights and heat. Each utility bill has more distribution charges than energy charges (Plus I forget the actual gas we use) So natural gas portion Is maybe $2000 -3,000 in carbon tax (worst case scenario)
My situation shows that shows carbon tax will directly cost us half of a PST alternative.
Indirect cost: we calculate the carbon tax to give an overall increase of less than 1% to our total budget. I am assuming that some suppliers will be passing 1- 3% to us. so another $2000 to $4000 in indirect costs for the relevant purchases.
So with direct and indirect costs, my organization gets a better deal on a carbon tax than we would on a PST implementation.
While certainly would prefer not to see these increases, they are still less impact than we experienced in the 2006-2007 boom (or even the 2011-2013).Fuel prices where 25% higher. Heating was 3 times higher.
This province prays daily that energy prices will increase. We knew that When these prices increase our energy costs where going to go up again.We hate more taxes but this is still less than going to a PST.
Maybe I am just resigned I always knew that prices are going to go back up. The proposed carbon tax is still less of an increase that what we paid at the pump when the oil patch was booming.