General Road and Highway Discussion

[jamincan]

the buying activity will still take place, and will almost certainly result in the same economic activity and taxes as buying a car (with a possible small decrease if you instead buy on average more imported goods).

This is an overly simplistic assumption.  Money can be used in a lot of ways that don't result in sales tax revenue.  Savings.  Non-taxable goods.  Foreign goods and Travel.  Etc.  There's some overlap, but you can't just ignore it and pretend like it would be spent anyway.

I think it's a fair argument. Money doesn't have any inherent value until it's exchanged for some sort of goods or services. The government taxes that. The exceptions are a small fraction of what is taxed with HST.