VICTORIA — Opposition leader Adrian Dix strongly suggests that if the New Democrats form the next provincial government, they will raise income taxes, but only on the highest earning British Columbians.

“There is not a lot of room to move on income taxes, except at the high end,” is Dix’s standard formulation when addressing business groups, media outlets and others about the NDP agenda.

The statement invites followup inquiries, the first being who is included in his definition of high-income earners, the second being how much he would seek to increase their taxes.

Questions along those lines bring another standard response from Dix, namely “wait for the election platform,” scheduled for release early next year.

Still, based on what he has said to date, he has no intention of reversing most of the income tax cuts introduced by the B.C. Liberals, notwithstanding the views of some NDP supporters.

Just the other day, for instance, the B.C. Teachers’ Federation cited the Liberals’ first-day-on-the-job 25-per- cent cut in income taxes as evidence of the available room to move to raise more funding for education.

But as Dix might recall if pressed, those Liberal cuts followed an election in which the voters passed a decisive verdict on the tax regime of the previous NDP government, reducing its standing in the legislature to a mere two seats.

In keeping with his stated goal of a moderate and do-able agenda for the first term of an Adrian Dix-led NDP government (because he’d like there to be a second term), he has determined that the party will keep its tax grabs to a minimum.

The corporate income tax, currently 10 per cent, would be raised to 12 per cent, still well short of the 16.5-per-cent rate that prevailed last time the New Democrats were in office. In a profitable year, the hike might bring in an additional $300 million.

He likewise rules out a return to the broad-based tax on corporation capital, a cash cow for the NDP government of the 1990s that also constituted a major obstacle to investment. The singular exception would be a minimum tax on the capital of chartered banks, projected to raise at least $100 million.

By the same token, the New Democrats are looking at a surcharge on income taxes that would only be applied to the very high end of earners. That, in turn, argues for a modest impact, both in terms of the number of provincial taxpayers affected and in the amount of money likely to be raised.

The most obvious target for a surcharge on high-income earners would be British Columbians making $250,000 a year or more.

Only about 22,000 provincial tax filers fall into that category, based on the most recent data available from Statistics Canada. They constitute about one per cent of all provincial residents who pay any provincial income taxes. (About 3.4 million file tax returns, but 1.1 million fall below the threshold of actually having to pay anything.)

On average, the folks making $250,000 a year or more provide the provincial treasury with the equivalent of a cheque for about $55,000 apiece. Less than half, $25,000, is levied on the income they earn above and beyond what would be the designated high-income threshold.