Ontario NDP proposes to slash gasoline taxes

Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath says an NDP government would take four percentage points off the HST applied to gasoline.

The Ottawa Citizen:

Toronto – Provincial New Democrats will reduce tax on gas by four percentage points, party leader Andrea Horwath said Friday in an announcement aimed at the pocketbooks of Ontario voters.

The promise would be implemented beginning with a one-point reduction in the HST in 2012-13. The HST on gasoline would fall a further percentage point in each of the next three years.

Horwath said she wasn’t making a more extravagant offer – to cut, for example, the entire eight-per-cent provincial portion of the HST – because she wanted “a platform that’s actually practical and that’s achievable.”

The $500-million annual cost of the measure, once fully implemented, would be financed by raising corporate taxes to 14 per cent.

Ontario’s corporate tax rate is scheduled to fall to 11.5 per cent on July 1 from the current 12 per cent.

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