Voters in British Columbia have voted to dump the Harmonized Sales Tax after the results of a provincial referendum were released Friday.
The tax has been ousted with 54.73 per cent of voters turning it down.
B.C. will now return to paying a 5 per cent Goods and Services Tax and a 7 per cent provincial sales tax. The government will also have to pay back the $1.6 billion it received from Ottawa to transition to the HST.
The 12 per cent tax was introduced July 1, 2010 in both B.C. and Ontario, but the tax was met with angry opposition from many British Columbians.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation said the defeat was a victory for "common sense and families," while the B.C. Conservatives said killing the tax is a failure on the part of the Liberals to convince people it was in their best interest.
Jim Sinclair, president of the B.C. Federation of Labour, said the HST represented an unfair tax shift of $2 billion from corporations to families.
"In the end, common sense and the desire for fair taxes prevailed," he told The Canadian Press.
In February 2010, British Columbia's Chief Electoral Office approved a petition submitted by William Vander Zalm, a former B.C. premier, to rescind the HST and restore the PST.
More than 500,000 people signed the petition against the tax, triggering B.C.'s unique direct democracy laws that forced the vote.
Registered voters were able to cast their mail-in ballots to vote ‘yes' or ‘no' for the HST from June 13 to Aug. 5 in the province.
If voters picked ‘no', B.C. would have kept the HST. The tax would have then been reduced to 11 per cent in 2012 and 10 per cent in 2014.
The government, headed by Liberal premier Christy Clark, had promised she would cut the HST to 10 per cent by postponing tax cuts to large businesses.
Clark also had offered families with children and low and modest-income seniors one-time transition cheques of $175 per child and senior.
Early this week, Clark said she had a plan if the tax was defeated.
"I know what Plan B will look like. If the HST is rejected, we're just going to get to work. We'll just roll up our sleeves and get down to work," she said.
Elections BC, the agency monitoring the vote, told The Canadian Press on Friday that about 1.6 million British Columbians, or about 52 per cent of registered voters, had their say in the referendum.
With files from The Canadian Press
