Like everyone else in British Columbia, I was faced with a decision over the weekend: To vote yes or no on the HST.

So I did. Then, as if it were a radioactive isotope, I wrapped my vote in three separate envelopes and sent it off to Victoria, where I’m led to believe it will be part of the tally that either keeps or kills the HST.

Want to know how I voted? I’ll bet you do.

But first, here’s what I thought before I voted.

I thought I have never felt more insulted as a citizen than I did when, nine weeks after promising the HST was not on the government’s radar, Premier Gordon Campbell got himself re-elected, then went ahead and implemented the tax anyway.

I thought that instead of just charging my business clients five per cent, all of a sudden I was required to charge them 12 per cent, and, somehow, that was supposed to be good for all of us.

I then thought that the opponents of the HST have never made a successful argument in favour of restoring the old GST/PST system, especially after the government moved to soften the blow by promising to bring it down to 10 per cent by 2014.

I also thought that not one of us understands what the tax landscape will look like if the HST is voted down. Will the former PST exemptions apply? Or is this just a prelude to a costly wrangle that promises to drag on well into the 21st century?

I then thought that the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen is the NDP pretending to lead a revolt against paying taxes. Any party that really believes in a civil society and a social safety net also has to admit it supports progressive taxation; yet the NDP is playing politics and is pretending it has the same outlook as Bill Vander Zalm.

I remembered that in Ontario, the Canadian Auto Workers union is warning against an anti-HST revolt. Here in B.C., it’s promoting one. Politics again.

I remembered that, although its leader has changed, the government in Victoria is the same one that imposed the HST in the first place, and why should I believe anything it says?

I thought what it comes down to is this: Either vote in favour of keeping a good tax dishonestly imposed, or vote for a dumb old tax we never had a real chance to kick to the curb.

Why, I finally thought, should I vote for a dumb old tax, no matter what?

So I didn’t. I voted no.