NDP get Nova Scotia Power billing statistics through FOI request
NDP: Too few get heat relief
Tufts Cove - Image by Property#1 via Flickr
Thousands not getting sales tax break because of rebate
Image via Wikipedia
Thousands of Nova Scotians who heat with electricity aren’t getting the sales tax break they should be getting, according to the NDP.
The province says it rebates the eight per cent provincial portion of the harmonized sales tax on electricity used for heat. It assumes people use an average of 27.4 kilowatt hours of power a day for lights and appliances, and amounts above that are for heat and have the rebate applied.
But the government’s number-crunching is flawed because there are people who don’t meet the rebate threshold, even though they heat with electricity, NDP Leader Darrell Dexter says.
Image via Wikipedia
"Those households, by and large, would be the one-bedroom, two-bedroom apartment kind of homes," Mr. Dexter said in an interview Friday.
"Generally, I think it’s fair to understand that those would be the poor people, those would be the lowest-income people who would be losing the HST rebate."
He pointed to Nova Scotia Power billing statistics, which show 21,611 customers who say they heat with electricity solely had used less than 10,000 kilowatt hours a year, or 27.4 kilowatt hours a day.
The statistics, from 2004, were included in the response to an NDP freedom of information request for the province’s analysis on the electricity rebate threshold. More recent statistics could not be obtained Monday.
The amount of money at stake would differ by customer. If someone used 2,000 kilowatt hours for heat, the rebate should be about $19; if it’s 5,000 kilowatt hours, it’s about $47.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=ed10c9b7-b851-4b7d-aae9-4a3ac55d1bb3)
Posts
