{"id":29705,"date":"2015-01-17T03:00:37","date_gmt":"2015-01-17T08:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=29705"},"modified":"2015-01-16T07:35:25","modified_gmt":"2015-01-16T12:35:25","slug":"alberta-to-introduce-a-provincial-sales-tax","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/01\/17\/alberta-to-introduce-a-provincial-sales-tax\/","title":{"rendered":"Alberta to introduce a provincial sales tax?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/politics\/thinking-out-loud-about-an-alberta-pst\/\" target=\"_blank\">Colby Cosh<\/a> explains why this is unlikely, at least in the short term:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yeah, look, guys. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/news\/canada\/alberta-premier-prentice-considers-sales-tax-to-fix-ailing-oil-based-economy\/\" target=\"_blank\">I realize that Jim Prentice is talking about the possibility of a provincial sales tax for Alberta<\/a>. I think he\u2019s just trying to make sure he has our FULL ATTENTION before he passes a very austere budget, because I do not see a clear path toward us actually having a PST.<\/p>\n<p>Under current Alberta statute \u2014 the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.qp.alberta.ca\/documents\/Acts\/A36.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Alberta Taxpayer Protection Act (ATPA)<\/a> \u2014 Albertans would have to vote \u201cyes\u201d in a province-wide referendum before a PST could be introduced. The government gets to write the referendum question, which as we all know is a big advantage, but the economists who support a PST have not done anything like the necessary public outreach and education to soften up superstitious, PST-averse voters. The PCs are obviously hell-bent on a spring election, and spring seems far too soon for that sort of gamble, although the referendum could be held on the date of the general election.<\/p>\n<p>It is more likely that if Prentice sincerely wanted a sales tax, he would try for repeal of the ATPA without an official referendum. Prentice could make that a centrepiece of the upcoming election campaign \u2014 a \u201cno me without a PST\u201d kinda offer \u2014 but then opposition parties and troublemaking journalists might ask why there is no formal referendum being held in parallel with the election. The whole point of the ATPA was to prevent premiers from forcing package deals of that sort onto voters.<\/p>\n<p>And, of course, Albertans might actually take the \u201cno me\u201d option, rejecting a Conservative government in favour of \u2026 Stop laughing! It could totally happen!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Colby Cosh explains why this is unlikely, at least in the short term: Yeah, look, guys. I realize that Jim Prentice is talking about the possibility of a provincial sales tax for Alberta. I think he\u2019s just trying to make sure he has our FULL ATTENTION before he passes a very austere budget, because I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84,53],"tags":[542,118],"class_list":["post-29705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-politics","tag-alberta","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-7J7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29706,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29705\/revisions\/29706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}