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Just before Albertans launch into the new, high-tax universe in 2016, take a moment to memorialize one of the smartest things an Alberta government ever did — the introduction of a single-rate tax system, courtesy of Ralph Klein’s government.

In 2001, in announcing the new tax system, then Treasury Board President Steve West said that, “There are two ways to establish a progressive tax system. One is to tax high income earners at a very high level; the other is to tax low-income earners at a very low tax level.”

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As West put it, the Klein government “decided to take the most compassionate approach and not tax low-income earners at all.”

Indeed, Ralph Klein and his colleagues provided a generous basic exemption that removed 200,000 Albertans from provincial tax rolls. It then applied a single 10 per cent tax rate on income above that exemption.

That tax had its critics. Last year, ex-Premier Jim Prentice body-slammed Alberta’s 10 per cent single tax system. He claimed it was unfair to the working poor. “It is a system which bites them pretty hard, compared to the rest of the country” said Prentice in January 2015.