HST Introduced Today

Ontario's Liberal government will introduce legislation today to harmonize the province's eight per cent sales tax with the five per cent G-S-T.

In addition to creating a single, 13 per cent sales tax next July, the bill also includes a series of cuts to income, small business and corporate taxes that take effect in January.

Finance Minister Dwight Duncan says the province needs to make businesses more competitive so they can hire more people and lower prices for consumers.

He says the tax package is about creating jobs and rebuilding Ontario's economy as it emerges from the recession.

The bill also provides for tax rebate cheques of up to one-thousand dollars for families to help offset the impact of the H-S-T in the first year.

The opposition parties call the H-S-T a blatant tax grab which will add eight per cent to many items now exempt from the provincial sales tax, including gasoline, home heating fuel and hydro bills.

The National Citizen's Coalition estimates the H-S-T will cost the average taxpayer an additional 800 to one-thousand dollars annually.

Thunder Bay-Rainy River M-P John Rafferty is still confident people can still halt the Harmonized Sale Tax from moving ahead.

Rafferty says opposition to the blended tax is growing as more and more people begin to realize the true impact HST will have on their budgets.

Rafferty has asked the federal government not forward $4.3 million to Ontario toward the harmonizing of the sales tax, a motion that expected to come up for debate early in the new year.