BC's Carbon Tax A Success

Twin_Moose

Hall of Fame Member
Apr 17, 2017
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Twin Moose Creek
'25 per cent is a big number': B.C. luxury car dealers brace for impact of new surtax

The mood in B.C.'s auto industry has soured in the wake of the NDP government doubling the surtax on luxury cars in its 2018 budget.
Starting April 1, PST will go up from 10 per cent to 15 per cent on vehicles priced between $125,000 and $149,000.
Buyers shelling out more than $150,000 for a vehicle will pay 20 per cent in GST, also up from 10 per cent.
A person buying a $300,000 vehicle would pay $75,000 in taxes, including the 5-per-cent GST.
The NDP government — which first introduced a luxury car surtax in the '90s — says the revenue will "help pay for better services for British Columbians."
But high-end car dealers and industry observers are calling it a "punitive" tax in Canada's luxury-car mecca.
"My phone has not stopped ringing," said Blair Qualey, president and CEO of the New Car Dealers Association of B.C., which represents nearly 400 dealerships and 36,000 workers.
"Our members who sell in the market are gravely concerned."
High demand for luxury cars
Luxury vehicles now account for one-third of automobiles sold in B.C., according to DesRosiers Automotive Consultants.
Sales in the province have also surged in the past decade. Roughly 35,500 luxury vehicles were purchased in B.C. in 2017, a nine-per-cent jump from 2016.
BMWs, Mercedes and Range Rovers are a common sight in Metro Vancouver, which boasts the highest number of luxury vehicles per capita in North America.
But local car dealers worry that affluent buyers in B.C. will now will turn to other provinces.
Ontario, which commands the second-largest share of luxury-car sales, charges 13-per-cent HST. Buyers in Alberta pay five-per-cent GST.
"The automotive sector is incredibly competitive. Where a consumer can go to another jurisdiction to save money, they will," Qualey said.
'This is reckless'
Buoyed by rising sales, luxury car dealers in Vancouver have poured money into sprucing up their facilities.
Burrard Street, between 2nd and 8th Avenue, has become a hotbed for gleaming, multi-level showrooms, including the Ferrari Maserati dealership.
General manager Mark Edmonds said he expects sales to fall, even if buyers can afford the vehicles.
"It's a psychological thing for people. Twenty five per cent is a big number," he said.
"Maybe now they'll buy a boat instead of a car, or maybe a vacation property. ... Then the province will lose out on the sale completely."

© David Horemans/CBC Luxury car parked in downtown Vancouver on a sunny January day.
Vancouver's Weissach dealership, which sells luxury sports brands like Lamborghini and Bugatti, has ramped up its staffing in the past two years. But CEO Asgar Virji says the tax will affect its growth.
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"This is reckless," Virji said. "It hasn't been vetted and gone through consultation."
Qualey, with the New Car Dealers of Association B.C., said the province should have instead increased the threshold for the surtax.
The first bracket is a one-per-cent surtax, plus the seven-per-cent PST, for vehicles priced from $55,000 to $59,999.
But Qualey said pickup tricks now cost that much
When considering a new threshold, he pointed to the cutoff vehicle price — $77,000 — for the province's clean-energy-vehicle rebate program.
'Strategic' tax increase for the government
But the car dealers acknowledged that many British Columbians are unlikely to be sympathetic.
"It's one of those tax increases that are kind of tough to defend," Dan Baxter, policy director with the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, said on CBC's B.C. Almanac.
"If you can afford a $150,000 vehicle, you can probably pay a little more."
The move is part of the NDP government's strategy of resurrecting sin taxes to fund its new programs, said Hamish Telford, a political science professor at the University of the Fraser Valley.
"These are obviously strategic tax increases because they don't offend a lot of people and raise a modest amount of revenue," he said.
With files from CBC's B.C. Almanac
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Hoid

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 15, 2017
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It doesn't matter where you buyba car as soon as you try the o insure it in BC you pay all the applicable taxes.
 

Decapoda

Council Member
Mar 4, 2016
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Loosen up your wallet for record-breaking gas prices in Metro Vancouver

If you think you’re paying a lot at the pump now, just wait — it’s about to get worse.

Gas prices have been hovering around $1.50 per litre since the end of February, and an industry expert doesn’t think relief is anywhere in sight with the summer months approaching.

“$1.60 is really a no-brainer. It’s likely to happen sometime between roughly April 15 and Sept. 15, at which point we go back to winter blends of gasoline, which is cheaper for refineries to make,” GasBuddy.com’s Dan McTeague said.



Carbon tax...good.
Pipelines...bad.
 

Hoid

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 15, 2017
20,408
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Burning fuel - bad.

Smoke in air make world die and people sick.

BTW eleventy-seven pipelines from Alberta will not make gas prices go down in BC.
 

pgs

Hall of Fame Member
Nov 29, 2008
26,543
6,923
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B.C.
Burning fuel - bad.

Smoke in air make world die and people sick.

BTW eleventy-seven pipelines from Alberta will not make gas prices go down in BC.
So the tax isn’t about stemming global climate change but promoting cleaner air to breath . Maybe they should sell it that way .
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
108,907
11,188
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Low Earth Orbit
They already sold it that way once before.

Loosen up your wallet for record-breaking gas prices in Metro Vancouver

If you think you’re paying a lot at the pump now, just wait — it’s about to get worse.

Gas prices have been hovering around $1.50 per litre since the end of February, and an industry expert doesn’t think relief is anywhere in sight with the summer months approaching.

“$1.60 is really a no-brainer. It’s likely to happen sometime between roughly April 15 and Sept. 15, at which point we go back to winter blends of gasoline, which is cheaper for refineries to make,” GasBuddy.com’s Dan McTeague said.



Carbon tax...good.
Pipelines...bad.

And it will hit that number by Friday.
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
108,907
11,188
113
Low Earth Orbit
BTW eleventy-seven pipelines from Alberta will not make gas prices go down in BC.

That is odd because in August of 2015, a tanker that sailed all the way from Newfoundland, through Panama Canal and all the way up to Burnaby dropped the price of gas by 12 cents and everyone rejoiced.

Went from $1.44 to $1.32.
 
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Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
Apr 9, 2008
22,837
7,782
113
Regina, Saskatchewan
This is the OP from Apr 1st, 2016
A carbon tax may be a controversial topic in the United States, but in one Canadian province, this eight-year-old policy has been such a success that on Wednesday more than 100 businesses said they support a tax increase.

In a letter addressed to Premier Christy Clark, who governs the province of British Columbia, more than 150 companies said they back a plan to increase the carbon tax by $10 — about $7.70 U.S. — per metric ton a year starting in July 2018, an idea the government-sponsored Climate Leadership Team unveiled earlier this year.

Since 2007 British Columbia has been setting greenhouse gas reduction targets based on findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s most respected authority on the subject. Four years after introducing the first carbon tax in North America in 2008, British Columbia froze the tax rates at 2012 levels to allow other provinces to catch up. However, that freeze could be lifted under a new Climate Leadership Plan that could be approved this spring.

more

British Columbia's Carbon Tax Has Been So Successful That Businesses Want To Increase It | ThinkProgress
.....& this is from September 27, 2019
http://torontosun.com/news/national...tax-shows-us-why-a-national-one-is-a-bad-idea

Politicians are trying to sell a national carbon tax to Canadians this election, but we shouldn’t buy it.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is pointing to B.C. as a template for a national carbon tax. But be warned: the B.C. carbon tax is not reducing greenhouse gas emissions and it’s filling up government coffers with taxpayers’ money. It’s a tax grab that is not helping the environment.

B.C.’s emissions have gone up 2.4% over the last three years and have increased in five of the last seven years, according to the B.C. government’s own data released this month. In 2017 — the most recent data year — GHG emissions are listed at 64.4 million tonnes, up from 63.6 million tonnes in 2016.

Politicians tell us that we are paying the carbon tax because it will reduce emissions but the government’s own records show that’s not happening. What is the point of paying an ever increasing carbon tax when it doesn’t work?

In 2018, the provincial government took in $1.7 billion from B.C. taxpayers through the carbon tax, and it’s planning on taking $2.2 billion from taxpayers by the year 2021, when the carbon tax is jacked up to $50 per tonne.

Politicians also told us that gasoline and diesel vehicle use would drop because of the carbon tax, however the government data again shows that’s not true.

Emissions from gasoline powered cars are up 6.2%, pickup truck emissions are up 18.7%, and heavy duty gasoline truck emissions are up 10.4% over the last three years. When it comes to diesel use, there was a large 47.8% jump in emissions from light-duty diesel pickup trucks over the past three years.

Let’s look at how much this carbon tax costs us for everyday life.
At the pumps, the carbon tax costs B.C. drivers about $7 extra to fill their minivans, $11 extra for their pickup trucks, and $19 extra for their diesel super duty pickups.

If a commuter family has a sedan and a pick up truck and fills up once a week, they pay more than $900 extra per year just to get to work and take the kids around.

For a tractor trailer truck – the ones that deliver groceries to grocery stores — filling just one of those diesel tanks costs an extra $48 in carbon taxes. This adds to the cost of everything.

When the carbon tax was first foisted upon British Columbians in 2008, we were told that the tax would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, stop at $30 per tonne, and it would be “revenue neutral” because other tax cuts would offset the carbon tax.

Today, none of that is true. The carbon tax has been hiked up to $40 per tonne. Politicians have dropped the malarkey moniker of “revenue neutral” altogether and the government is just keeping the extra revenue instead of even pretending to offset the carbon tax with other tax cuts. On top of it all, GHG emissions are going up, not down.

The Sierra Club of Canada calls B.C.’s emissions approach a “failure” and it says politicians have been full of “noble rhetoric.”
As Canadians consider carbon taxes, they need to look at the experience in B.C. where this all started. It only makes people here poorer while emissions continue to rise. Don’t fall for it.

 

Ron in Regina

"Voice of the West" Party
Apr 9, 2008
22,837
7,782
113
Regina, Saskatchewan
…& here we are. A memo that B.C.’s energy minister mistakenly dropped suggests the B.C. NDP is desperately trying to shore up support for the embattled carbon tax.

The Opposition, which released a copy of the email Thursday, said it’s evidence the NDP is using the carbon tax as a “political slush fund” for partisan gain, not to address climate change. Whoopsies!!!

The minister, Josie Osborne, sent an email to herself on Nov. 22 at 7:13 a.m. saying Premier David Eby is “looking for a big and shiny affordability measure for (the next) budget” and that her office is considering returning a portion of the carbon tax to people through a CleanBC rebate on their monthly B.C. Hydro bills.

CleanBC is the NDP name for the plan to reduce carbon emissions in B.C.

Osborne said she sent the email to herself based on ideas floated by an unnamed adviser. Osborne printed off a copy email Wednesday and dropped it somewhere in the hallways of the legislature, which she called “her mistake.” It was picked up by a rival B.C. United member.

Mike de Jong, B.C. United MLA for Abbotsford West, said during question period the memo shows evidence of the government’s “plans to politically manipulate B.C. Hydro to stall collapsing support for CleanBC.”

The memo comes during a heated debate over the future of the carbon tax in B.C. following statements from B.C. United Leader Kevin Falcon that he would freeze the carbon tax and remove it from home heating fuels and from B.C. Conservative Leader John Rustad, who promises to scrap the tax entirely.

Both say the carbon tax is crippling the economy and hard-working taxpayers, an argument Osborne has said ignores the fact that the majority of British Columbians will eventually get back more than they paid through the climate tax credit???

Oh, we’ve all heard that tale before, where a tax is collected, a bureaucracy is built around it to administer it, and somehow it’ll pay for this bureaucracy AND pay out more than it collects…

 
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