Liberal leadership candidate Mike de Jong has been trying to nip away at frontrunners Christy Clark and Kevin Falcon in part by highlighting his tax policy.
As the race’s only former lawyer, de Jong makes it clear that, unlike pragmatic opponents, he has a carefully thought out approach for how British Columbians should be taxed.
“I have a bias. I favour discretionary taxes over non-discretionary taxes. That’s not a term we normally hear. Discretionary taxes are consumption taxes. They relate to choices that people can make. Non-discretionary taxes are income taxes where the government says, ‘Give us your money and we’ll make the decisions for you,’” de Jong told Business in Vancouver.
Fraser Institute co-founder Michael Walker similarly favours consumption taxes over other forms of taxation. (See “Michael Walker profile” – issue 1031; July 28-August 3, 2009.)
“Think about the gross national product as a pile of goods in the middle of a town square,” said Walker, who is an economist who remains on his think tank’s board of directors.
“You want to tax people when they’re taking stuff off the pile rather than when they’re putting stuff on the pile. Consumption activity is taking goods off the pile. When you eat an apple, it’s gone.”
Falcon, in contrast, believes the more pragmatic approach is to trim 1% off B.C.’s harmonized sales tax (HST) as soon as possible and then slash a further 1% off the tax at a future date.
He told BIV he believes tax reduction is the price the Liberals might have to pay for implementing the tax in a sloppy fashion.
The result of that tax cut, Falcon said, is that the public might be more willing to vote in favour of the HST in a referendum.