Alberta is the only province in Canada without a provincial sales tax.

It’s a city on a hill for taxpayers who are fed up with paying more tax when you head to the cash register to buy something.

Taxpayers across the West should be fed up because nearly half of their paycheques are going up in smoke thanks to taxes.

There are income taxes, fuel taxes, property taxes, business taxes, carbon taxes, capital gains taxes and sales taxes.

Federally, there’s the five per cent GST, and in every province but Alberta, there’s a form of PST.

Sales taxes inflict more pain on the wallets of taxpayers with less income. It doesn’t matter if you make $1 million per year or $10,000, the sales tax percentage charged remains the same.

Sales taxes take a bigger bite out of smaller paycheques.

Alberta taxpayers are saving huge amounts of money from not having to pay a PST.

For example, Alberta has more than 825,000 students who are returning to school.

Parents will spend an average of $788 on back-to-school supplies per student, according to a Deloitte survey. If Alberta parents spend even half that much, they are saving about $27 in PST per student. Across the province, families are saving about $22.6 million by not having to pay a PST while shopping for school supplies.

That’s because families aren’t paying a seven per cent PST on things like clothes, shoes, backpacks, notebooks, calculators, lunch bags, laptops and phones.

Alberta’s Taxpayer Protection Act prevents a PST from taking root. If a government decided impose a PST in Alberta, it would have to win a referendum on the question first. That’s not the case in the rest of Western Canada.

Taxpayers in Saskatchewan are forking over more than $3.3 billion in PST this year to the provincial government. A Saskatchewan family making $75,000 annually, pays about $2,100 per year in PST.  

That’s because the Saskatchewan government keeps tacking it onto to almost everything you buy. The government raised the PST from five to six per cent and removed exemptions for used cars, restaurant meals and children’s clothes in 2017.

The government also started charging PST on event tickets in 2022. That means the Saskatchewan government is charging you more to watch the Riders.

Take used cars, every time you purchase a used car in Saskatchewan that’s worth more than $5,000, the government expects you to hand them a cheque for the six per cent PST on it, no matter how many times it’s been bought and sold before.

On a vehicle worth $10,000, buyers will have to fork over $600 extra to the government.

It doesn't matter how old the vehicle is. It doesn't matter how many times it's been bought and sold, the provincial government is standing there with its hand out, taking more.

Provincial governments are bloodthirsty when it comes to the PST.

It’s the same story in British Columbia.

Back in 2004, the B.C. government noticed that wise British Columbians were saving some of their big purchases for their summer trip to Alberta, because they were saving about $150 on a new washer and dryer set because Alberta doesn’t have a PST.

Former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell’s government tried to tell retailers in Alberta to take pictures of British Columbia license plates in their parking lots and to send the B.C. government the sales receipts.

Why?

So, the B.C. government could charge those shoppers B.C.’s seven per cent PST on top of the items which the family had purchased in Alberta.

The stores told the B.C. government to go pound sand and the government had to drop the case.

Alberta academics and politicians chattering about a PST need to look at their neighbours and remember that a sales tax makes life more expensive for those who need help most.

Saskatchewan and British Columbia need to look at Alberta and realise how much taxpayers can save if they cut their sales taxes.