If the federal government cut federal gasoline taxes by six cents per litre, and your provincial government decided a day later to increase your provincial gasoline taxes by four cents per litre, announcing they were cutting your gas taxes by two cents, what would you call that

If the provincial government cut the tax rate on their education property tax, saving you 1 per cent on your property tax bill, and your municipality increased their local property tax at the same time by 4 per cent, claiming they were only increasing taxes by 3 per cent, what would you call that

If you're a taxpayer you can call it two things: stealing your tax cut, and a shell game.

If you're Calgary Mayor, Dave Bronconnier, you call this "righting the balance," "changing the ratio," or "vacating the tax room." Remember these phrases, because you're going to be hearing them soon in every corner of the province if Mayor Bronconnier gets his way.

For much of the past decade the Alberta government has been slowly reducing its education property tax. However, many Albertans have not been receiving their rightful tax break.

Because both property taxes (the provincial education property tax and the local municipal property tax) are calculated and collected locally (the education tax is then remitted to the province), ratepayers can only get their provincial tax break if their local municipality allows it.

In 2006, the province cut Calgarians education property tax by $25.7-million.

However, before it got into Calgarians wallets, city council, led by tax-hungry Mayor Bronconnier, confiscated the money to increase city spending.

Laughably, the city refuses to admit they are playing a shell game with Calgarians tax dollars. Instead, they claim the province intended them to keep the tax cut instead of passing it on to the people who pay the tax.

The shell game's number one cheer-leader, Mayor Bronconnier, is very proud of this tax grab. He spent over $100,000 to advertise and mail out a glossy householder in 2005 touting the benefits of the city keeping Calgarians tax cut. He then had the temerity to poll Calgarians on whether or not they read it.

This year, he's already spent half of his $500,000 propaganda campaign budget on advertising, polling, and hosting five town hall meetings to accomplish the same.

But where Mayor Bronconnier has been most effective, is at convincing other municipalities to join his tax grab parade. The City of Red Deer now practices this shell game, and recently the City of Edmonton joined the band.

Adopting Calgary's "worst-practices," the City of Edmonton recently announced they'll use a 1.5 per cent cut in the provincial education property tax to make the city's 6.5 per cent tax hike (a hike that is over double Edmonton's current inflation rate), appear to be only 5 per cent.

Albertans in every corner of the province need to watch their own local municipalities a bit closer now. Politicians love using smoke and mirrors to make your provincial tax cut disappear.

Every politician will acknowledge there's only one taxpayer, but unfortunately there's a bunch of tax-takers, and when they fight over who gets to spend your tax dollars there's really only one loser.