Gas prices up in Nova Scotia
Posted Mar 7, 2011 02:24:24 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
If you’ve been to a gas station recently you’ve probably noticed you left with less in your wallet than usual.
The price of gas has jumped and experts are blaming the unrest in oil producing nations like Libya, but some people are also blaming provincial policies.
The price of gas has already jumped 11.5 cents in 2011 over what it was in 2010 and 18.1 cents for diesel. If gas prices stay where there are today, Nova Scotians will pay about $32 million more in taxes than last year.
Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil tells Maritime Morning’s Jordi Morgan that while we can’t control what’s going on overseas, we can still work to control the price here.
He says a lot of our gas price problems can be solved by de-regulating the industry and by adjusting taxes.
“Government in this province is charging tax on tax and it’s unfair, it’s simply unfair,” he says. “And as the price of gas goes up so does the take from the provincial government”
He’s referring to the way taxes get applied to gas.
“Nova Scotians are paying the HST on top of the Federal excise tax and the Provincial excise tax,” says McNeil. “So we’ve been paying tax on tax.”
Essentially, there’s the base cost of the gas, plus a federal tax of 10 cents per litre, a provincial tax of 15.5 cents a litre. Then there’s a profit margin through regulation of anywhere between 1 and 4%.
Once that’s all added up, the 15% HST is calculated and added to that total cost.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says every one-penny increase in gas prices means taxpayers shell out $2.4 million more in HST.
