text: Exactly.  The top combined provincial + federal tax rate is 47.7% in BC so there isn't a lot of room to raise it much further without crossing the 50% barrier which most have said is the psychological barrier and tends to have negative impacts.  Sure the NDP might just raise the top rate from 14.7% to 16.8% which would give a combined rate of 49.8% thus staying under 50%, but this wouldn't bring nearly enough revenue to cover their costs.  They have to raise taxes on the middle class or PST to cover them and good luck selling that politically, thus they won't do this.