I had hope that we had seen the last of the habitual bad math but this report does little to give comfort:
Ottawa itself could lose as much as $218-million in annual hotel tax revenue alone, he said…”Talk about shooting yourself in the foot,” Mr. Pollard said. The value of international tour groups and conventions in hotels was $1.28-billion last year, he said. Canada’s convention business as a whole is worth more than $2-billion a year, another industry official said. The government cancelled the Goods and Services Tax rebate program late last month. It said the move would save $78.8-million and that less than 3 per cent of foreign visitors applied for the rebates anyway. But Mr. Pollard believes the government didn’t include conferences and group travel in its calculations because convention planners get the GST rebates up front, not after the fact.
These number may not pan out as the actuals – do they ever – but as the looming bubble burst approaches doing things to make bits of the economy less competitive is an odd approach for a traditionally pro-business party. The whole tax policy thing is odd when you think about it: increasing income tax, the big-talk do-little GST shift, the uncertainty about moving around tax credits between levels of government, the beer and popcorn money tht makes my kids pay for your kids and now this.
It raises the more interesting and non-partisan question of “why is tax hard?” One likely reason is that it is used as a mechanism for other social and economic policy. It is a tool. If the policy is not well scoped out, perhaps difficulties will show in the tax side of the matter. But what policy goal is achieved by adding $78.8-million to the cost of international business and travel into Canada?