Too bad British Columbia doesn’t have a Harmonized Sales Tax.

That’s not a sentence you’ll hear said very often in this province, given the political graves dug by those who supported an HST here (briefly) in 2009. But it’s true — especially after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his new two-month GST exemption last week.

People who live in provinces with an HST — Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island — are going to get a better deal, with fewer administrative headaches, under the federal affordability measures, which runs Dec. 14 to Feb. 15.

That includes an up to 15 per cent total tax holiday on major items, under Ottawa’s affordability package.

That’s because when Ottawa drops the federal tax within an HST, the provincial sales tax disappears alongside it.

It’s not quite the same in British Columbia.

The province already doesn’t charge PST on many of the items Ottawa chose to exempt from........

© BIV