Dear Editor,
Copy of a letter sent to Finance Minister Brenda Bailey, MLA Lisa Beare, and BC Seniors Advocate Dan Levitt
I just heard the news about the increase in the cost of property tax deferral and I’m angry and appalled.
I am 66 years old and have just enrolled in the tax deferral program, because I saw it as one of the only way to gain access to the equity stored in a residential home without having to endure the personal upheaval of selling the home and moving to cheaper accommodation.
I find your government’s action to be petty and mean-spirited.
As I see things, because of the utter financial recklessness and profligacy of the current NDP government, they must resort to (almost literally) digging into the pockets and the spare-change drawers of current, mostly financially-marginal senior citizens, in order to get a few more dollars to feed their boundless excess spending.
The record-setting budget deficit numbers are the obvious proof of this financial mis-management.
B.C. Finance Minister Brenda Bailey has been quoted to says that, “changing the loan program would dissuade people from using it as a ‘cheap source of capital’.”
Exactly!
For single seniors living on meager government social assistance and a small private pension, what are the options for maintaining financial solvency in the face of ever-rising living costs and ever-enlarging tax burdens which are imposed by the heartless stroke of a finance minister’s pen?
Is it really the job of the finance minister to make life ever more expensive for the citizens of B.C.?
To root out every possible tax advantage to all seniors regardless of financial status? (Is it true only about 16 per cent of seniors choose to defer their taxes?). And, it is just a deferral, after all. The government will get their payment, plus interest, upon the ultimate sale of the house.
Heaven forbid that there be some sort of beneficial option for seniors who have been “milked” of tax dollars for our entire lives: via income tax, property tax, PST, GST, past carbon tax, industrial carbon tax (which, I ultimately pay), capital gains tax, import tax, alcohol tax, transit tax, school tax… It’s utterly endless!
Oh, and by the way, I’m very much expecting a full and total reimbursement of all the thousands of carbon tax dollars that were taken from me during the last 10 years or so (plus interest @ prime + 2%), in the B.C. government’s misguided and failed attempt to save-the-world from global warming.
Rick Halas, Maple Ridge