Contentious HST bill introduced in Ontario

Ontario's Liberal government has introduced legislation to harmonize the province's eight per cent sales tax with the five per cent GST.

The bill, tabled Monday afternoon at Queen's Park, creates a single, 13 per cent sales tax that will take effect next July. The bill also includes a series of cuts to income, small business and corporate taxes that would take effect in January.

The province needs to make businesses more competitive so they can hire more people and lower prices for consumers, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said. The tax package is about creating jobs and rebuilding Ontario's economy as it emerges from the recession, he said.

The bill provides for tax rebate cheques of up to $1,000 for families to help offset the impact of the HST in the first year.

The opposition parties call the HST a blatant tax grab that will add eight per cent to many items now exempt from the provincial sales tax, including gasoline, home heating fuel and hydro bills.

Ontario's New Democrats said the Liberal government is kicking people when they're down.

'Job killing tax'

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath told the legislature on Monday that people "don't want a new tax that will make life more expensive during these tough economic times."

Horwath called the HST a "job killing tax" and said the government should not be giving profitable companies a huge tax cut.

Premier Dalton McGuinty said the New Democrats are stuck in the past and view all corporations as evil.

McGuinty pointed to a study the government commissioned that shows moving to a single sales tax will help create almost 600,000 jobs over 10 years.

The National Citizen's Coalition estimates the HST will cost the average taxpayer an additional $800 to $1,000 annually.