Campbelll fiscally responsible -
HILARIOUS!!The 2000/01 fiscal year ended with Victoria collecting tax revenues of $14.3 billion, while the 2010/11 budget calls for tax receipts of $17.4 billion (since boosted to $18.1 billion in the first quarterly report). The composition of taxation revenue changed considerably over the 10-year period.
Two of the biggest sources of tax receipts -- personal-income tax and corporate-income tax -- were surprisingly flat over the decade, given population growth of about 500,000 and inflation. The reason? The many and on-going tax cuts unveiled by Campbell since 2001.
PIT revenues slipped from $5.963 billion to $5.861 billion, while corporate-income tax revenues dropped from just over $1 billion to $847 million for the current year. (Again, the first quarterly report boosted the latter figure to $1.5 billion.)
Tax revenues from retail sales rose from $3.6 billion in 2000/01, to an expected $5.2 billion in 2010/11. The former figure was generated by the provincial sales tax (officially known as the Social Service Tax) alone, while the latter is an amalgam of the PST and the new (and much-hated) Harmonized Sales Tax, which replaced the PST on July 1.
One levy, the corporation capital tax, was whittled away to nothing under Campbell's stewardship, while a new one, the carbon tax, was introduced in 2008. The former generated $459 million in 2000/01, and zero in the current year; the latter is expected to produce $727 million in Campbell's last year in office.
The biggest gain in tax receipts over the decade was due to world-wide low interest rates, which sparked a housing boom (and bubble) in much of the western world. Property-transfer revenues totaled $262 million in our base year of 2000/01, and are expected to hit $900 million at the end of the current fiscal period.
In total, Victoria's tax receipts grew by just $3.1 billion (or $3.8 billion, based on the first quarterly report) while Gordon Campbell was premier. As a proportion of B.C.'s economy, provincial tax revenues fell from 10.8 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), to about 8.9 per cent.
Given that the 2010/11 budget estimates that B.C.'s GDP this year will hit $196.3 billion, the annual revenue lost to tax cuts is about $3.7 billion.
In the 1980s, Social Credit governments led by Bill Bennett and Bill Vander Zalm received three special equalization payments from Ottawa. Bennett got the first such payment, for $139 million, in 1983/84, and a second for $35 million in 1984/85. Vander Zalm obtained $360,000 in 1986/87.
The NDP garnered a single equalization transfer, of $125 million, in 1999/2000.
Gordon Campbell's BC Liberals, in contrast, received five such payments: $158 million in 2001/02; $543 million in 2002/03; $979 million in 2004/05; $590 million in 2005/06; and $459 million in 2006/07. (So huge were these transfers, that B.C. actually had to re-pay an overpayment of $330 million in 2003/04.)
The New Democrats got a total of $125 million in equalization; Gordon Campbell's BC Liberals, a total of $2.4 billion.
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Topic: Cambell has stepped down!!! (Read 25877 times)