Now available … “HST Math for Dummies”

Yesterday in the Vancouver Sun, columnist Don Cayo had a brief story entitled “The HST’s total impact on BC prices well under 1%”.  The following two paragraphs are the story in its entirety:

What might he be saying? Perhaps,"I think
the effect of the HST will be about this much"

The impact varies according to your income and spending habits, but for the average British Columbian the impact of the HST has been less, according to a just-released study, than most experts predicted. And much, much less than many of the tax's critics have claimed.

Jon Kesselman, the Canada Research Chair in Pubic Finance and Simon Fraser University, has calculated the overall impact on the price of consumer purchases at 0.6 per cent, based on StatsCan data on price changes and spending patterns, and factoring in inflation.

I guess perhaps columnists for the Vancouver Sun make enough money they can just kiss off any increase the provincial government decides to throw at us.  Stating that the impact of the HST has only amounted to an increase of .6% of course does make it sound very small … but let’s look at this in “real” dollars and cents.