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Page 4, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 1992 sees: Our Opinion = Rules for selling cars a tax grab Sitting in the dentist's office a while back, I struck up a con- versation with a fellow aficionado of the most Canadian of all Canadian singers, Stompin' Tom Connors. After stumbling through the first verse of Sudbury Saturday Night, (The girls are off to bingo/The boys are gettin' stinko/And we'll think no more of Inco/On a Sudbury Saturday night), I told her I worked for the newspaper. And, as often happens: she gave me a great idea for an editorial. It's something that the media hasn't really picked up on, although it's certainly not something the province has tried to hide. They've taken out ads in many newspapers, telling peo- ple that the procedure for buying or selling a used car is about to radically change. As of the first of this month, whenever someone buys a used car, van or light truck in a private sale, the provincial sales tax they pay will be based not on the actual cost of the car, but on the wholesale price, as listed in the Canadian Red Book. The Red Book is a listing of suggested wholesale values of used vehicles, and assumes that they have been perfectly main- tained. If the actual purchase price happens to be more than the Red Book value, you pay tax based on the purchase price. Now, according to the salespeople I've talked to about this, the prices listed in the Red Book are a guide and don't always reflect how much people actually get for their used vehicle. And with the recession and hard times in the automobile indus- try, people usually get much less than the Red Book value for their cars. So what this means is that if you sell your old clunker to your neighbour for parts, he's going to have to pay tax on it as if it were in good condition. Or if you want to sell quick--or if you just want to give somebody a break--and set- tle for a lower price, too bad. The provincial tax will be based on the assumption that you've gotten top dollar. And starting next year, in order to change ownership, you have to buy a vehicle transfer package first: The package will contain information about a vehicle's history, debts and, of course, retail sales tax. To be fair, there will be some exceptions to the new rules--for example, giving one of your children ownership of the family car wouldn't be taxed. But it's difficult to see the Used Vehicle Information Program, as the government calls it, as anything but another tax grab. I tried calling the toll-free number the government is urging people to use if they want information about the program, but all I had to show for three days of dialing was an endless stream of busy signals. It's no secret that we are over taxed and over regulated. What this program does is add yet another layer of bureaucra- cy and expense where neither is needed. Perhaps there is a really good reason for the program beyond helping to fill the provincial coffers with a littler bit more tax money. But I doubt it. Darren MacDonald The Nipigon-Red Rock Gazette and the Terrace Bay-Schrelber News are members of Laurentian Newspapers Limited 158 Elgin Street, Sudbury, Ontario P7E 3N5 (705) 673-5667 John Thompson, Vice President Cy Ye 18 Zand WIZS Members of the Canadian Community Newspapers Association and the Ontario Comminity Newspapers Asscoiation EDITORS ADVERTISING PRODUCTION Cindy Laundry Ad. Manager & Quality Control Darren MacDonald Linda Harbinson Supervisor OFFICE / ADMIN. Ad. Consultant Heather Michon & Circulation Chery! Kostecki Clara Dupuis PUBLISHER...A. Sandy Harbinson Local offices are located at 145 Railway Street, Nipigon, Ontario POT 2J0 (807) 887-3583 fax 887-3720 and Highway 17 & Mill Road, Terrace Bay, Ontario POT 2W0 (807) 825-3747 fax 825-9233 2nd. class mailing permit 0867 One year subscriptions are available by contacting your local newspaper at one of the addresses listed above. Rates are:- Local seniors $12 | added to all subscription purchases. Other local $18 Outside 40 mile radius $29 USA $38. GST must be DMX /Canada brings back radio's glory days "Oh, the days when radio was new, Wilmer. It was so beautiful. Back then . . . radio spanned the continent and radios were built to pull in signals from far away . . . These little dinky plastic radios you buy today won't get a signal from thirty miles away and why should they? The shows sound the same everywhere you go. The radio is filled with twenty-four hours of orange peels, cigarette butts and coffee grounds, and it sells the beer, Wilmer, but gosh, what a comedown . . . Radio used to be a dream and now it's a jukebox From WLT, a novel by Garrison Keillor. You listen to the radio? Most o us do, at some time or another j during the day. For some it's a travelling companion, an electronic buddy to sit out traffic } jams with. Others listen in the kitchen or the den. I've got a son who's congenitally incapable of taking a shower without his § waterproof walkman sitting in the ° soap dish. I listen to a lot of radio too--the CBC, mostly. (No big surprise, since I work for the CBC.) But it's not just a case of employee loyalty. I listen to the CBC because, frankly, I can't stand most private radio. It's the commercials. They're like a swarm of aural black flies clustering around my head. They're loud, they're intrusive and nine times out of ten their trying to sell me crap I don't need and don't want. I could even stand that if there was the slightest suggestion of class of artistry in the commercial come-ons, but there almost never is. The radio is far from perfect. We air some shows with pleasure quotients that rate well behind root canal surgery. But at least there are no commercials. Which just may be the radio wave of the future. There's a new firm in Edmonton called DMxX/Canada that's fixing to revolutionize the crystal set as we know it. DMX/Canada is offering a service that Arthur Black cable system. Among other things, the service delivers 35 all-music channels. That's all music. No chatter. No stock reports. No commercials. Those channels include: a French language music channel, a classics channel, a ' contemporary channel featuring Canadian popular music . and something called the elax Channel. When you tune in to elax, you get nvironmental sounds --ocean surf, ululating oons, logs crackling in the 'fireplace--that sort of : thing. : There is also a channel 'devoted to symphonic == music, still another to chamber music, and one for opera. Sounding a little too long-haired for your taste? Don't sweat it. DMX/ Canada also offers channel selections that play hard rock, soft rock, R & B, folk, blues and jazz. There's even a channel for Big Band freaks. The bottom of the line is, for about $9.95 a month, subscribers will be able to listen to uninterrupted hours of whatever kind of music he or she feels like--literally at the push of a button. Not only that, but the hand-held remote converter that comes with the service has another button. Press it and you get a readout telling you the artist, the song title, the composer and the record label of whatever piece of music you happen to be listening to. I don't know whether the service will fly or not. Times are tough, and folks might resist the urge to fork out an extra ten dollars a month just for the privilege of hearing their favourite music unsullied by jingles and pitchmen and traffic reporters. They might resist. But if I held a lot of shares in a local private radio station, I think I'd be dialing my stockbroker's number and