Just over 13 years ago, I was invited by Premier Redford as a representative of the justice system to her 'Economic Summit' to confront the 'unprecedented' (except for all the other times before) budget problems then facing Alberta due to volatile world oil prices and difficulties getting our oil out to more diverse markets.
My biggest takeaway from the experience was that there was near universal agreement among all economic advisers that the least regressive tax measure for the economy that could be implemented in a fair way so as to drastically increase revenues and not harm lower income Albertans would be a sales tax.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/alber...-tax-1.1348407
It is not to say all were advocating for one (though many openly were), but nobody could or would venture any good argument against a plan of introducing a PST together with a corresponding large reduction in income tax (potentially as simple as increasing the basic personal exemption before the obligation to pay income tax even kicks in).
Quote:
Among the business people, economists and academics in favour of bringing a sales tax to Alberta were George Gosbee, CEO of investment firm AltaCorp Capital, and University of Calgary tax expert Jack Mintz.
"It's my view that we don't have a cost problem, we have a revenue problem," said Gosbee, who also said spending cuts would be "draconian."
Gosbee said he's also in favour of bringing back health care premiums.
Mintz said Alberta's challenge has more to do with spending than it does revenue, but that it has a "tax mix problem" as well.
He said the province relies too much on "harmful and volatile" sources of revenue.
Mintz advocates switching from income to consumption-based taxes, whether that's through user fees, excise taxes or a sales tax.
"Many Albertans believe that having no sales tax is a tax advantage. It is the opposite. Not having a sales tax is a disadvantage in today's global economy," he said.
He added U.S. state governments that have low income taxes but have a sales tax, such as Texas, are seeing stronger economic growth.
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Unfortunately, because many Albertans believe the opposite of reality as noted in the bolded sentence above, every single politician took an immediate and rock-solid definitive position that no way, no how, would we ever consider a PST.
At some point, Albertans have to take responsibility for what Albertans have done to Albertans. For all the hero fantasies factions of this province want to wrap themselves in, our province has scored a huge pile of 'own goals', and we still refuse to just turn around and at least face the other net before winding up for another booming slapshot...and then bragging about how great we are.