I'm not writing this letter as a pro or con regarding HST, but rather to point out how people's opinions regarding this and other "hot" topics can be skewed with misinformation.
The other day I saw a woman being interviewed regarding her thoughts on HST. One of her comments was that her clothing would now cost more. Of course this is totally incorrect. While approximately 80 per cent of the average person's regular purchases won't be subject to any further taxes, somewhere along the line, she seems to have interpreted that the HST is an additional tax on everything, over and above GST and PST. How, I wondered, do people come to these conclusions? What have they been reading, or been told?
Then I read Sarah Makowsky's article on May 14. The wording (or lack of words) is misleading as to the impact of HST on the cost of certain grocery items. Nowhere in the article does she state what the items cost you now, but rather what their pre-tax cost is. Yes, the cost of a single 99 cent muffin will now be $1.11 (not the $1.14 shown in the article), but that muffin already costs you $1.04; the $2.29 flavoured water already costs $2.41; the two bags of chips for $5 already cost $5.25. So it turns out that the increase in costs is not as great as implied.
Unfortunately, many readers don't stop to "do the math", and simply take the information at face value - probably because they just don't want the tax increase, so they want it to look as bad as possible. Now I understand how people can get these ideas.
Brenda Willway
Prince George
