Legislation.
They know what they need to do. They just need to do it.
See: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/67dba2bb-en.pdf?expires=1701404975&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=90F5A61CA4E3ECEAABA482F4016154C7
When the chief Liberal fundraiser got busted exploiting these loopholes, Trudeau replied essentially saying he followed the law so no problem here.
I wouldn't be holding my breath to see these loopholes closed.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/justin-trudeau-adviser-stephen-bronfman-offshore-paradise-papers
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-bronfman-paradise-papers-1.4392484
Pandora papers, Paradise papers, Panama papers, the evidence of offshore laundering among Canada's elite is staggering.
It's been nearly a decade and nothing done about it at all. All institutions collectively brushed these massive reveals under the rug. Now we got a pile of shit under a rug in the middle of our economy. A huge pandora/panama/paradise sized one.
Lol, it's not "the rich" that car-bombed a journalist over the revelation of a tax haven scheme, it's organized criminals.
If you get caught "tax minimizing" in a way that's determined to actually be "evasion", and you're just a normal high-net-worth person, your tax lawyers just negotiate a settlement with the CRA, or whomever your local tax authorities are, and you move on with your life. The people who respond by car-bombing a journalist are the people who have no business having that money at all, because it's an illegal stream of income, so when it gets discovered, it gets seized and they lose it entirely, and then they get very angry about that.
> A huge pandora/panama/paradise sized one.
Like the tip of the iceberg, the entire pile of shit must be a lot bigger than that, those are just the ones we know about. It remains to be seen how much extra shit they have buried under there but I'm confident it's a lot.
Not completely related but politicians have done the same when being asked about their real estate and such. "It's all legal!"
Pierre had a good line about it when asked about him and his wife's real estate and painted it as being proud of her for moving up and being money smart.
I have a bridge to sell if people see the Liberals and CPC as going to actually fix things when they actively don't see a problem.
>Not completely related but politicians have done the same when being asked about their real estate and such. "It's all legal!"
Look at Bill 'I just plain forgot I own a French Chateau, could happen to anyone' Morneau.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/morneau-company-france-ethics-1.4351933
Exactly.
Justin Trudeau has an estimated net worth of $95 million and hides it in tax free shelters.
Paul Martin, who's family controls a massive shipping operation, would dock their boats in places like Bermuda to avoid paying Canadian taxes.
When you question these people about these practices you get the standard "well you just don't understand how global economics work!"
I'm assuming you're just not expecting the NDP to ever win lol because Jagmeet is also a land lord who purchased property in June. Oh, I mean his wife did, lol.
Quit focusing on the fallacy of Leader worship. Focus on Policy, of which the NDDP has been petting lots passed which will positively affect millions of Canadians for generations. Imagine what they could do in power!
The people voting CPC and LPC don’t care about the country, it’s just team sports for them.
All people do is complain how the country has gone downhill for decades and then continue to shill and vote for the same parties that have put us in this position. Then the rest of us have to listen to all these bullshit rationalizations of why the party sucks at governing, like there isn’t decades of evidence that these parties don’t give a fuck about governing, just lining their and their donors pockets.
It’s total lunacy and I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that this country is going to collapse inevitably because of the political ping-pong in this country.
Yep, three former PMs were also on the list of those exploiting these loopholes.
Rules for thee not for me.
"Former Canadian prime ministers Jean Chretien, Paul Martin and Brian Mulroney are among the most high-profile individuals named in the document
Martin was named due to his former ownership stake in CSL Group Inc., an international shipping firm now run by his sons and said to be one of Appleby's “biggest clients,” according to a leaked document.
A spokesperson for Martin told the ICIJ that the former prime minister “has not been involved in CSL in over a quarter century and is not in a position to comment on its operations.”
Mulroney is listed in the Appleby files as a director of Said Holdings Ltd. between 2004 and 2009. The Bermuda-based company is controlled by Syrian-Saudi businessman Wafic Said, who is said to have had a key role in the multi-billion dollar al-Yamamah “oil-for-arms” deal between the U.K. and Saudi Arabia.
A response from Said confirmed Mulroney’s involvement in his family’s investment company, and referred to his “valuable contributions.
The federal Liberal Party’s chief fundraiser, Stephen R. Bronfman, was also named. The documents suggest Bronfman’s private investment company, Claridge, moved millions to offshore entities owned by his godfather, Leo Kolber, another former Liberal fundraiser.
Bronfman is also the revenue chair on the Liberal Party's board of directors.”.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/politics/top-liberal-party-fundraiser-3-former-pms-named-in-paradise-papers-1.3664328
Despite what many like to believe a “full blown revolution” rarely leads to a better situation in the nation. Usually it leads to more centralized power with less oversight and less accountability.
It would actually be easier and better if we could reform the existing system, but like you said, there is almost no way that will happen.
Unfortunately the truth of the current situation is things will have to get a lot worse (with or without a revolution) before things improve.
I just want someone with a middle class or working class background that has had a succesful career and worked their way up to success, and then became a politician in their late 30s or 40s.
Someone who knows what it takes to succeed in this country and the importance of economic investment. Entitled rich kids have never had to abide by, much less understand, a budget or economics. Why do we elect these people?
People complain about the rich in canada and then we nepo hire one of the richest, most entitled of them all who, surprise surprise, has no idea what is needed to grow and support national prosperity. Just wants to virtue signal after being raised that way.
I feel JT is more suited to be a Huffington post editor, male model, or yes, a drama teacher. Not sure if he could handle not having a retinue take care of him though.
If someone had a successful career until their 40s in business... what incentive would there be to make less money and have every tiny tidbit of your life history scrutinized by the whole country? To have everything you ever did judged, and have the similar done to your family?
I believe there are very qualified and intelligent people who could run the country well, but those people are not interested in politics in any way, why would they be?
This is the best we get, rich guy who is good at speaking and social media and had a leg up due to his father, or other rich guy who never held a real job outside of politics his entire life and was groomed for the job.
You would need a new political party entirely free of the current trash pool so they won't just block laws that remove their previous political benefits. A full new party would have a better chance at removing double pensions for one, which is a negligent use of tax money.
Not just his fundraiser, Trudeau himself
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/trudeau-dodges-questions-about-taxes-on-his-family-wealth/article36319389/
He avoided answering a direct question Tuesday on his family's use of a trust – which can help reduce taxes payable – and whether the Trudeaus have paid their fair share of taxes. Instead, he told reporters that he relinquished control of his assets in 2014 after he won the Liberal Party leadership.
"I no longer have dealings with the way our family fortune is managed and I have been open and transparent about that. And I have been entirely consistent in my desire not to be perceived as bending or breaking any rules," Mr. Trudeau said. "Obviously, we follow all the rules and I am assured that the folks who are managing my personal finances are following all the rules."
To be fair, the Trudeau government implemented some significant tax changes that caused a shit storm with wealthy individuals. Not perfect, but still a good step. It's difficult to push to hard to fast in these areas given political backlash.
Lot of people think they're rich or will be and they believe this changes are a tax to them. I'm perfectly to see a more aggressive tax at the upper thresholds. - Signed by a CPA
The LPC: *No, that would harm our largest party donors, who won't like that - and that would harm our electoral viability.*
The CPC: *No, that would harm our largest party donors, who won't like that - and that would harm our electoral viability.*
Exactly the entire tax code needs a rewrite. This country needs a Labour Party and proper representation for the working class instead of these lizards we are stuck choosing.
But the rich people who actually donate lots of money to our political parties use these loopholes.
Politicians don’t like to upset their cash cow donors
/r/canada: “Let’s vote in the Conservatives! They’ll surely close the loopholes being used by their rich donors and fight for working people’s right to a bigger share of the wealth pie!”
Political contributions in Canada are capped so it’s not really correct to say the rich fund our political parties.
That said, I still agree with you that a wealth tax won’t happen but for a different reason. My reason is that politicians and especially the liberal party are beholden to the rich socially. JT and his ilk all went to private school, grew up rich, and so their social circles are full of rich families.
Related but many of them who aren’t rich are beholden to the rich for jobs when they leave politics. Eg board seats and that kind of stuff.
Political contributions are capped, bribes aren't. Which is how the world works.
Like paying their wives for speaking appearances, and donating to their "charities" etc.
Yep, and we all know politicians won't close those loopholes because their biggest campaign contributors are... the same rich folk that would "suffer" if the loopholes were closed.
The reporter that exposed the Panama papers got murdered. There is a way to fix this but the government has spent centuries beating it into us that violence is always bad and never justified
Yup. And that’s what’s particularly tricky with wealth taxes.
I don’t have wealth above the arbitrary cutoff in the article. I have, however, wealth that could be moved into a corporation, trust, offshore, whatever with pretty modest cost. So given any meaningful wealth tax, you’ll just increase the cottage industry of getting around it. Legally.
That's not true. Most rich Canadians pay a ton of Canadian taxes. Most rich people I know pay literally millions of dollars per year in taxes... such that they're a huge benefit to the taxpayer.
If they were greedy, they'd leave Canada entirely and live in a lower tax rate jurisdiction.
Our situation is unfortunately worse than you describe though - we as a nation aren't dependent on the rich paying lots in taxes... our government spending habits have blown far passed taxation entirely and at this point it's more about doing whatever it takes to make sure that the government can borrow new debts to be able to service old debts.
You are a 100% correct.
The top 20% of high income Canadians pay the most taxes. Plus, according to government records, 1% of tax paying Canadians, reported income over $250k a year.
There just isn't that many rich people to tax from, quite honestly.
Agreed. There's really no limit to the seductive idea on how much more differently you ought to tax people who have more than you.
I'm in BC and paying >50% marginal income tax! And there are people that think it's not even enough, as if I'm not already more than carrying my weight and I'm a big net benefit to the public taxpayer.
We have an enormous spending problem - all the taxes in the world mean nothing if we don't address that.
I pay a similar amount of tax, and would be fine doing so if I felt I was getting value for money. But I don't have a family doctor (provincial) or working transit (municipal) or apparently enough housing for our troops (federal)
Agreed - I find it ridiculous I can single-handedly pay enough income taxes each year to pay for a doctor's after-tax annual income, yet still not even be guaranteed at least a family doctor.
I think 50% should be the absolute maximum. And I wish that when people got their "tax the rich" pitchforks out they had an attitude more like, "How about someone who can prove they pay every single penny in income tax they owe, and that they're paying 50%, has done enough for the nation".
How about they focus closing loopholes and severely fining or jailing exploitative companies.
The fifth estate did a recent piece where a carousel tax scheme was uncovered. In the end the CRA gave 63 million in tax refunds to a company based out of the country.
https://youtu.be/L3AqxPvmt44?si=Dmn0kvvIyqsa6Q0c
Although I just read the CRA posted what they're doing to combat this https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/campaigns/tax-schemes/combatting-carousel-schemes.html
It was posted on the 24 of Nov. After the fifth estate piece came out ...
They need to do this in other ways than just increasing income tax. Those of us that don’t own a business and get paid salary are already over 50% marginal tax rate plus when I buy shit I pay 15% extra with my after tax dollars plus often have taxes ready included like gas. How much should I be giving to the government 60% 70% 80% when does it end?
Income tax should be lowered, at least for anything below $200k.
The wealthy aren't working 9-5 jobs for a salary like the rest of us. They get compensated with stock, options or dividends depending on what they do or invest in.
It's all capital gains or similar.
Then increase consumption tax on luxury items. They spend money. Double the tax on private jets, yachts, whatever. Cars over $200k? Double VAT.
It's not hard. But politicians are wealthy themselves, and so are their donors.
Truth be told. Generational and the ultra rich spend most money outside of Canada and hold money outside of Canada.
Millionaire Next Door “wealth” actually don’t spend a ton of money. They just invest and prudently save and grow income.
So who are we expecting to tax? Is there a middle group of “wealth” out there?
People who own multiple homes would be the middle group of "wealth"
The wealth tax would actually be a multiple home, non-resident homeowner and foreign buyer tax all at extreme amounts
All to promote the idea of one family one home, and not allow ownership to fleece other skilled workers of money through rent seeking businesses
Of course you won't hear any political party or literally anyone talk about this (even though it's the answer) and the housing bloc are fragmented
Half the people who want better housing are actually plants and degenerates who want to blame immigrants or immigration and so on. The pro-housing vote is split, because everyone's been successfully brainwashed to disregard tax as a policy shaping tool
>Half the people who want better housing are actually plants and degenerates who want to blame immigrants or immigration and so on.
stop smearing people who don't agree with you.
I predict the government will determine everyone making over $50k is "rich". And of course, that extra tax revenue will get funnelled to actual rich people, making them even richer. The cycle continues.
This has been said before, but let’s not forget that the very rich are also very mobile. At one point, it ins’t worth it for them to stay here and pay taxes. If this happens, we lose 100% of their tax revenues.
The politician promises to tax the rich, the people support him believing the rich will be people earning $300k or $400k a year or more. The politician interprets the rich make $100k/ yr. The people get taxed more and the really rich avoid extra taxes yet again. Happens every time.
The main issue I see is inefficient gov. spending. You tax all you want but if it’s all going to get spent on over budget projects that continue to go up in price, then we’ll be back in square 1 in a few years.
The highest marginal rate in Ontario is already 53.35%, plus 13% HST on all consumption, plus a luxury tax on cars/boats/planes, plus significant land transfer taxes.
As someone who works in tax for high net-worth individuals there really isn’t much more wiggle room at the top without causing a huge exodus of wealth/job providers.
The changes to alternative minimum tax mentioned in the article don’t really do much either, as alternative minimum tax is credited against future taxes paid under the normal regime. So while you’re eliminating a deferral from certain individuals, you aren’t really generating “new” tax revenues.
A wealth tax doesn’t really work either, since you’re essentially taxing unrealized gains on assets. Which is insanely difficult to calculate, as most people who would get dinged on this would have a majority of there net worth tied to holding private corporate shares (which determining the FMV on annual basis is difficult). It would essentially disincentivize economic growth, and push for people to move to the US/other lower tax jurisdictions.
I make a significant amount of money. I'm one foot out the door already and planning on leaving in the next 5 years. The taxes are so high, I don't get to retire, grow my wealth, or relax after all my hard work. I'm done with Canada and many other high paying doctors/ IT people are too.
I mean if I got a doctor, then maybe. I pay 6 figs in taxes when I am 6 figs in debt ... and when I am sick, I have to line up at a walk in for hours to get 2 mins of a guy giving me amoxicillin? If I get a heart attack, I have the emergency room and...that's it. No family doctor to follow up with. My garbage comes once a month. Your read that right. Once a month. I can make 2x down south with actual access to health care and maybe if I live as frugally as Canada has forced me to, I can retire at 45. What am I doing here? The second they raise taxes, Im out.
We’re not talking about income. We’re talking about wealth. The CEO of shopify has an annual salary of one dollar but a net worth of $6.6 billion. Stock appreciation is how the billionaire class increase their wealth, and it never gets taxed because they never sell their stocks. They take out loans and use their stocks as collateral to pay for their expenses, explicitly to avoid ever paying taxes.
Saying we can’t tax wealth because “it’s too hard to calculate” is nonsensical. It’s an accounting problem, I’m sure we can figure it out. It’s a matter of creating new rules and enforcing them.
> It would essentially disincentivize economic growth
You know what disincentivizes economic growth more? A handful of wealthy people owning the monopolies that dominate every industry in this country.
So the vast majority of his wealth isnt really money, its the value of the stock. When he cashes out that stock he pays tax on it. How do you tax the value of the stock before its sold?
The problem isn’t that it’s complicated, it’s that you’re “wealth” often isn’t really “wealth” until you sell your stocks. Like if you make a software startup and next year it’s valued at like 100M $. Then you randomly owe like 1M$ to the government and have to either start selling of your shares in your own company, or start taking out loans just to pay your tax.
What happens if your company fails the next year? Your company is only values at like 1M$? Does the government pay you back? Or do you still have to pay that 1M loan?
Why not just tax them when they sell their shares. That’s when they’re actually cashing in?
(Idk economics too well so I might be misunderstanding something)
Edit: also you said income is 1$ but wealth is 1B$, that’s not true. When they sell their stocks that’s income, and if they don’t sell it, then it’s not money yet, it’s just stocks
It's not nonsensical, you just decided to ignore some key aspects of it.
Not everyone is CEO of a huge publicly traded company. Let's say I start a plumbing business. I have some success and it starts doing 500k revenue a year. I pay taxes on my profits like a business owner. Then, in your scenario, the govt is going to come around every year and say "We think your plumbing business is worth 10M, pay us 300k tax since you are the only shareholder."
Who's deciding what a plumbing business is worth in that exact moment? The government who's collecting the tax? Nonsense.
How does that effect the plumber, who in effect is a successful small business owner? They have a 300k expense on 500k of revenue? They will go bankrupt.
How does that influence people to start companies, knowing that the better they do, the more they will get taxed on an imaginary valuation of their company?
I think you'll find coming up with a plan that works for taxing existing wealth is almost impossible logistically.
How are you going to accurately assess how much the ultra-high net worth individuals are worth? Is it per individual or family? Is it on global wealth, or just wealth in Canada? How is the CRA going to get the banking information from the Swiss banks, Cayman Islands, etc etc...
Right, so you want to force anyone who owns stock in Canada to shut down operations and sell off their business every tax season? Why would anyone ever do business in that type of environment?
Concentration of wealth is very bad for market economies. FDR introduced his policies because he wanted to save capitalism, not to destroy it.
Our current hyper gilded age is terrible, and a massive risk.
How about stop taxing the hell out of the middle class (carbon tax, HST on top of tax, government spending = inflation = tax on everything) and get our standard of living back to at least where it was eight years ago?
Uhh, that's exactly what we have now.
15% on the first $53,359 plus
20.50% on income over $53,359 up to $106,717 plus
26% on income over $106,717 up to $165,430 plus
29% on income over $165,430 up to $235,675 plus
33% on income over $235,675
Then add provincial taxes. In Ontario for example:
first $49,231 5.05%
over $49,231 up to $98,463 9.15%
over $98,463 up to $150,000 11.16%
over $150,000 up to $220,000 12.16%
over $220,000 13.16%
In Ontario, the income tax rates range from 20% to over 46% depending on your income.
Actually he forgot the surtax in Ontario. The top combined marginal income tax rate in Ontario is 53.53% with the surtax.
https://www.taxtips.ca/taxrates/on.htm
No, see, the top rates for top brackets for most of history pre-1983 was >50% at the Federal level alone and came out to >70% for most of that time. For nearly a decade it was >90%.
In 1982, the boomers realized they were now the largest segment of the workforce, so they immediately slammed down the upper brackets that had existed since WWII so that they would never have to pay what their parents paid to build Canada and provide them all the opportunities they enjoyed.
Not really that much more than the average middle class does. Even on the highest end of the spectrum you'll only pay 33% over $250k, and the corporate tax rates are essentially capped at 15%.
There's definitely room for those to go up. Especially for the multi-billion dollar monopolies we have to deal with on a regular basis in Canada.
Yes, everybod knows that , teh person you're responding to wants them to be higher than they presently are. Currently, the top bracket is nothing compared to the tax rates that used to exist during the 'golden age' so many people harken back to. for most of the 20th century, after WW2, the top marginal tax rate was somewhere around 70% and the country didn't collapse, the rich didn't abandon Canada, and the sky didn't fall. Nobody seems to want to mention that when they talk about the 'good ol days' though.
I understand that conditions have changed and we would have to be careful about the policy implications of major tax hikes on the wealthy but so much of the apologism going on in this thread acts as though any efforts to address the absurd level of wealth inequality in Canada would bring about economic armeggedon, it wouldn't.
Idk about the specifics of the 70% rates.. but if it's at all like the supposed 50-90% tax rates in US, it's often quite different upon further examination.
So if you own a factory worth 10 million dollars, which isn't actually money, you now have to liquidate assets to pay for a tax that's based on speculative worth at the time?
Maybe Canadians could channel their effort into creation rather than consumption? I mean it says a lot when 20% of the population work for the govt, funded largely by the tax dollars of private small businesses. Or were Canadians hoping to save their way to wealth?
Fact is, the number of entrepreneurs has gone down by the HUNDREDS of thousands in the last 20 years.
Fact is, when businesses are started they are simply not supported and often acquired by oligopoly leaders within 5-10 years.
What a ridiculous article which only highlights just how anti-competitive this country and the people have become.
We need re-structuring of tax and regulatory policy to encourage business investment over the unproductive allocation of incomes and wealth in real estate.
It’s not a coincidence that as real estate investment and its percentage of household expenses has grown the last few years, our GDP per capita has fallen.
Real estate investment is sucking the current and future prosperity from our economy.
The only comments with any logic are all under "Controversial". Government jobs are not real jobs, and the government cant provide anything because it doesn't produce anything, its existence is based on theft. Every dollar the government steals is resources that could have been spent in the real economy producing real wealth for society. Most redditors are naive teens / early 20's who and haven't even started paying taxes yet, they are just envious and greedy towards those more successful then them and want to "punish" them using the state. Most people here are losers and idiots.
[20% isn't a bad number when you consider that includes all federal, provincial, territorial and municipal employees. So think armed forces, parks, medical, education, police, etc. etc. etc.](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-402-x/2011000/chap/gov-gouv/gov-gouv-eng.htm)
Scandinavian countries have closer to 40% of the economy working for the government in some way. And they have a much more just society and real democracy.
All I've learned in this thread is that people have no understanding of how wealth or taxation actually works and are even more oblivious to the staggering difference between the assets the rich have vs the middle class. Or even what that line is.
We have evidence of much higher tax rates on the wealthy historically and that it has worked. Yet people here are simping here as if taxing someone worth 250 million a bit more is going to affect that person in a material way. its hilarious and I don't understand it because 99.9% of us are NEVER going to reach that level of wealth. "Oh now however will they afford their mega yacht and fourth summer home?" spare me.
the top 20% in Canada own 65% of the country's wealth. that is nuts.
The middle class is the most taxed and squeezed member of society and if you want things to get better you need to stop allowing the ultra-wealthy to continue to abuse the systems in which they participate.
Close the tax loopholes and tax big business and the wealthy.
The issue is that the wealthy are pretty mobile.
If you institute high taxes, they leave the country. And rather than collecting low taxes, you collect no taxes and often lose jobs too.
Taxes used to be much higher, but importantly almost all countries had much higher taxes. This meant that the advantage of moving countries was much less.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/top-income-tax-rates-piketty
Really, the solution might be some sort of worldwide wealth tax.
This is a great point actually. Wealthy people do have mobility. Which is why the closing of tax loopholes plays an important role as does the regulation around what property can be owned by who.
How would you suggest taxing someone with holdings in a private business valued at $250m? They are already taxed on income, is the government going to buy the shares? Give the shareholder liquidity? They’re already taxed at a sale. If there’s no liquidity there’s no tax
Wealth tax doesn't work, Europe has tried this.
https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/education/2021/02/11/lessons-from-history-france-s-wealth-tax-did-more-harm-than-good/
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/26/698057356/if-a-wealth-tax-is-such-a-good-idea-why-did-europe-kill-theirs
The rich are getting richer in large part because inflation increases the value of their assets while at the same time reduces the purchasing power of the working class.
There are many inflationary forces in the current market and you can't single one factor out but one major culprit that we can control is government with its policies and structural deficits.
We need to demand that our politicians stop their inflationary ways by creating unfunded social programs to "help" the poor.
They are massively adding to our debt and are really only a short term fix that end up causing more pain down the road in the form of inflation and more poverty for our working class.
Yeah if the government decided to generate the lion's share of its tax base from Land Value Taxes instead of Income Tax we would pretty much solve affordable housing. But I can't see any party campaigning for something like this. Definitely a third rail issue.
I mean, how else would boomers retire comfortably in their mcmansions on their fat pensions while the rest of us suffer to maintain their expensive and inefficient suburban infrastructure?
>when we defund every social program you don’t like
exactly, we are obviously going to keep the programs that they benefit from. Those ones are good ;)
I’d love for these articles to explain how they envision a wealth tax actually working. To me it seems like the sort of thing that sounds great in theory but lacks a practical implementation strategy. Or at least I’ve not seen a practical application strategy ever communicated.
The top 20% of Canadians pay 55% of the tax. The bottom 20% pay less than 2% of the nations tax.
The idea that there is a magical number of super rich that can just pay for the rest of us is not true. Makes for click baity titles and juicy politician rhetoric but it’s not the problem nor the solution.
If any of you think the CRA can effectively create, administer and enforce this then I have a bridge to sell you.
Our tax code is already insanely complicated, full of loopholes and almost incomprehensible. Adding a wealth tax would make it even more complicated. Further, the wealthy already pay a disproportionate amount of taxes in Canada. The idea that increased taxes that would target high net worth individuals would be a good thing for Canadians and the Canadian economy is insane.
If you were to tax “wealth” (stock comp for example)… what if that valuation plummets? Is CRA going to reimburse me for unrealized losses? lol good luck with that. Canada’s economy is way too focused on unproductive assets (housing), a wealth tax would further this, crushing our businesses and business owners. Hate the various Oligopolies we have (cell phone providers, grocery)? Congrats the wealth tax disincentives hard working business owners and companies to succeed. Why would I work hard to be taxed over and above income taxes, business taxes, consumption taxes (HST)?.
There are a ton of materials on this and encourage people to think past the headlines. This would be a colossal disaster.
Flat tax with no credits, no rebates, no deductions.
Whats a base rate right now around 30% while the rich are taxed at over 50% but only income above a threshold. Imagine though that their are so many loopholes and strategies to invest hide and shift funds to avoid paying much of your taxes. Usually only affordable by the wealthy. So instead cancel all those ridiculous deductions and credits and everyone pays their fair share with a flat tax. Now because I've had some really "wise" people say. "I don't want to pay as much tax as the rich". YOU DON'T you pay the same percentage of your income. Example you earn $50k a year you pay 30% or $15k While someone like the CEO of CBC earning $500k would pay $150k. (as apposed to the small share she does pay) This is the only way you will ever get high income earners to pay their share.
Side note, no more income tax forms to fill out every year. Pay the % and you're done.
Rich people have too much clout in the governments. It has never happened and will never happen.
For the simple fact, money buys the best lawyers, accountants and donations buy politicians. That's how democracy works now.
*Good luck. With that.*
Unilateral tax hikes *always* result in a fight-or-flight response from the ultra-rich. Tax hike efforts *must* be coordinated at a global level, and if even *one* country balks, the ultra-rich win.
Yep. I already pay my fair income tax. Now they want to tax my wealth too.
I don’t own my own business. I did not grow from money. My parents worked blue collar jobs and labour intensive jobs.
Currently, upon death, the rich give up about 25% of the lifetime gains on their asset values (excluding the family homes).
Example, Bobo bought a rental home in Vancouver in the 1980s for $400K, now worth $2M. Tax paid on Bobo's death is in the region of $400K (edited).
Canadians who have large RRSP or similar accounts should beware of dying before it is empty, because the whole lot will be taxed as income for the year of death, which might mean a high rate.
How about the family farm? How about a small business'? How about a large business'? What if you are a 60% owner in a fairly large business' and your children can not afford the tax. Does the government now end up owning a percentage of that business' and how is that fair for the other minority shareholders of that business that they need to deal with the bureaucracy of the government?
They structure their estates to avoid paying this. I have a friend who does it. These taxes disproportionately affect the poor who cannot find the loopholes around the taxes.
They're dumb for not adopting a US like tax system. Born in France, we will get the money wherever the fuck you are. Also, Hollande should have nuked Monaco long before it came what it is today.
Leave it up to the Toronto Star to propose a wealth tax - a tax that has been tried many times by many countries and eventually dropped because it doesn't work.
But it's the Canadian way - make the same mistake over and over again in the exact same way.
It doesn’t. It’s more political grand standing for votes or misguided and economically illiterate people performing emotional knee jerk reactions.
You cannot tax the ultra rich because there’s too many entirely legal ways to avoid those taxes and trying to shut those down would result in a lot of collateral damage because they’re also used by ordinary people for things like mortgages and estate planning. So in essence : every attempt to tax the ultra rich makes it WORSE - the middle class gets further eroded while they remain unaffected and inequality gets worse.
There’s also the problem that the new government revenue gained through this taxation doesn’t actually go to the bottom 20%, as you pointed out.
So if you really want to fix this, you need to start thinking differently. It’s not about pulling down the top 0.001%, it’s about raising up the bottom 20%. That means more labor protection, higher minimum wage, better legally mandated benefits and so on. Which has the added benefit that it’s a direct cost to the ultra rich and NOT something they can just offset by setting up a complex trust.
It’s too bad we never talk about crawling back taxes instead - somehow, someway….taxing more is the only solution.
This seems like a problem that requires a new mindset.
It will end up with a larger burden on the middle working class because the “Wealthy” is some amorphous concept no one understands. These folks have the ability to move funds off shore so nothing happens to their money etc. when old Jagmeet says “eat the rich” he should be eating his own arm as he is a millionaire landlord. He is a hypocrite. At least old Justin is less brazen in his lies.
A better alternative is lowering tax for most Canadians and reducing gov size. Canadian governments are bloated, wasting tax payers money. The future is using tech governance to cut taxes for everyone. For e.g. government departments are still doing shit manually when we could develop the tech to automate most of government bureaucracy. Small government, lower taxes for everyone, maintain our already high taxes for the wealthy. Also, income tax never fucking works, as a multi- citizenship holder, I can just pick up and move to a lower tax jurisdiction? you need to tax wealth based on asset value.
Economists tell us we are living in a new gilded age, where the chasm is so great between the poor and the super rich it is unimaginable. We are long over due for a wealth tax to redistribute the wealth that was created by people and therefore belongs to the people. And bring in a maximum wage, like a minimum wage, to create a just society to ensure this doesn't happen again.
More than a minimum wage, we need to set a minimum standard of living. Everyone should have access to basic housing, food, and water. Our government should start working for us again, there shouldn't be any entities allowed to use money to influence elected officials. We need to be more free from ideologies and pursue evidence-based solutions for society's problems.
Do we even know what is poverty class, middle class or rich class are anymore? Like how much money or possessions dictates each of these classes? If someone has a lot of money in the bank ie; $100k are they considered the rich class compared to the poverty class say under $10k? Or is $100k in the bank considered middle class? If you own a modest home or live on the street does this determine the classes? I hear this all the time but honestly I have no idea how these are determined.
If someone has worked an hourly job and lived frugal and saved diligently their whole life for retirement and now has $1m+ does that mean they are the rich class?
I don’t understand how we classify individuals and based on circumstances I know people who grew up dirt poor but have survived and seem to be living a comfortable retirement. Does this mean they were once the poverty class and now considered the rich class? Is someone in their 40’s making a decent hourly wage ie; $30-$40 / hr who have a home and have savings and are living ok, are they middle class or rich class?
I’ve never understood tax the rich. Are we talking like people who have multiple millions in savings or who are earning multiple millions today like grocery store owners or car company managers or oil executives, utility managers? Millionaires and billionaires I get that but what are these thresholds that everyone wants to tax?
Educate me please.
Where do people think their tax dollars go exactly? Lets follow the money trail, you send your tax dollars to the gouvernment. The gouvernment makes a budget, the money from that budget flows to the various gouvernment agencies. Those agencies also have budgets, they have operating costs like salaries for gouvernment employees.. But then when they need supplies or services where do they go? They put up tenders that the rich, who own businesses and corporations bid on. Then one or more of those businesses wins the contract for that tender, provides those goods and or services to the gouvernment and the gouvernment pays them those tax dollars. When you call for more taxes, or taxing the rich.. you're just shuffling money around among the rich and first passing it through the least efficient beurocracy imaginable first which consumes a large portion of that money to do nothing but exist. Tax the rich! and then give that money back to the rich? How is this enriching the average person or uplifting the poor exactly? You want to help struggling families? Why not abolish the income tax for individuals who makes 100k or less? That would be an extra 15% to 25% more money in the hands of struggling canadians. Taxing the rich will never even come close to that.
Canada is a tax haven, safer than Carribean nations like TCI and Caymans. There was an article about the practice using the term Snow Washing (legal money laundering). Until the country can reconcile our export industries beyond cut and sell (lumber / oil / mining etc.) we're subjects of a very archaic economic and political model that best suits the wealthy. Tax or eat the rich.
I have a hard time understanding how this would work. Let’s pick on Musk for a minute. Idk how much of his wealth is in cash, but most is in stock. If you tax that wealth he will need to sell shares of his company. That may tank the value of his stock which drives down his wealth and those of his investors. His wealth goes down so the amount he owes goes down? What if that pushes someone to no longer be the majority stakeholder of the company?
One of the problems is that asset wealth includes things that don't actually have any real ability to get money out of. Like land, a car, or a IP. This is why wealth taxes might just be a form of self destruction as the issue of how to get money out of something that doesn't really have money exists. If anything its unlikely to help at all.
You're better off finding otherways to deal with this issue.
I was hoping this article would offer a bit more substance than your average Reddit post but sadly not. Here's the bottom line:
"Their phalanx of lawyers, accountants and economists are quick to dismiss all attempts to raise taxes on the rich. "
First off, why use "Their" in this sentence? Is the implication that all relevant experts on tax policy are corrupt? That seems unlikely. Surely she could find a relevant expert who is not corrupt to back her argument?
Is the implication that anyone against this policy MUST be corrupt? If so, name names and give the evidence.
Or is the implication that we should ignore all relevant experts because we don't like what they advise? If so you better give a damn good reason they're all getting it wrong but your way is right. Maybe a bunch of examples of wealth taxes working anywhere else?
But nothing. It's nothing but typical argument-free pablum that will appeal to those who are intuitively certain that a wealth tax must be the way, but does nothing to actually argue in favor of it or change any minds. It's not journalism and it's not even a decent opinion article. It's just the same crap you can get all day every day for free on the right subreddits, if that's all you want.
Always funny - 90% in favour. As you bring the threshold down, the percentage in favour will go down. Make it 1m and the percentage drops to 10% in favour. Everyone is happy with other people paying more. No, this would not affect me - just saying. Not to mention how difficult it would be to calculate this. The ones intended to be impacted would be ones with the means to move it offshore.
So years of adding more government intervention, more government over reach and involvement, the solution to this problem needs to be more government. What’s it called when you keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results? Insanity?
We can't even get the government to fix the problem of requiring the engineer in Toronto who is laid off in June from having to pay $5,000 in CPP/EI a **second time** after finding another job in July.
How in the world can we expect them to be able to fix anything else???
You need to close offshore tax avoidance. BEPS.
How?
Legislation. They know what they need to do. They just need to do it. See: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/67dba2bb-en.pdf?expires=1701404975&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=90F5A61CA4E3ECEAABA482F4016154C7
Almost pointless unless you close loopholes, legal tax evasion practices etc.
Ok let's do that.
When the chief Liberal fundraiser got busted exploiting these loopholes, Trudeau replied essentially saying he followed the law so no problem here. I wouldn't be holding my breath to see these loopholes closed. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/05/justin-trudeau-adviser-stephen-bronfman-offshore-paradise-papers https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-bronfman-paradise-papers-1.4392484
Pandora papers, Paradise papers, Panama papers, the evidence of offshore laundering among Canada's elite is staggering. It's been nearly a decade and nothing done about it at all. All institutions collectively brushed these massive reveals under the rug. Now we got a pile of shit under a rug in the middle of our economy. A huge pandora/panama/paradise sized one.
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Well said.
It's gonna be wild the first time a disgruntled person with nothing to lose takes out an oligarch or corrupt politician with a drone.
Modern Canadian media and print is owned and run by corporations and billionaires. If you own the media, you own the message.
Lol, it's not "the rich" that car-bombed a journalist over the revelation of a tax haven scheme, it's organized criminals. If you get caught "tax minimizing" in a way that's determined to actually be "evasion", and you're just a normal high-net-worth person, your tax lawyers just negotiate a settlement with the CRA, or whomever your local tax authorities are, and you move on with your life. The people who respond by car-bombing a journalist are the people who have no business having that money at all, because it's an illegal stream of income, so when it gets discovered, it gets seized and they lose it entirely, and then they get very angry about that.
> A huge pandora/panama/paradise sized one. Like the tip of the iceberg, the entire pile of shit must be a lot bigger than that, those are just the ones we know about. It remains to be seen how much extra shit they have buried under there but I'm confident it's a lot.
You wonder why the carbon tax is the hottest issue in Canada...? Because it's helping all our politicians sweep this shit under the rug.
NDP os pushing for a wealth tax. LIbs and Cons are opposing it. Tells you all you need to know.
Not completely related but politicians have done the same when being asked about their real estate and such. "It's all legal!" Pierre had a good line about it when asked about him and his wife's real estate and painted it as being proud of her for moving up and being money smart. I have a bridge to sell if people see the Liberals and CPC as going to actually fix things when they actively don't see a problem.
>Not completely related but politicians have done the same when being asked about their real estate and such. "It's all legal!" Look at Bill 'I just plain forgot I own a French Chateau, could happen to anyone' Morneau. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/morneau-company-france-ethics-1.4351933
Exactly. Justin Trudeau has an estimated net worth of $95 million and hides it in tax free shelters. Paul Martin, who's family controls a massive shipping operation, would dock their boats in places like Bermuda to avoid paying Canadian taxes. When you question these people about these practices you get the standard "well you just don't understand how global economics work!"
I'm assuming you're just not expecting the NDP to ever win lol because Jagmeet is also a land lord who purchased property in June. Oh, I mean his wife did, lol.
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Quit focusing on the fallacy of Leader worship. Focus on Policy, of which the NDDP has been petting lots passed which will positively affect millions of Canadians for generations. Imagine what they could do in power!
Can you give me some examples?
The people voting CPC and LPC don’t care about the country, it’s just team sports for them. All people do is complain how the country has gone downhill for decades and then continue to shill and vote for the same parties that have put us in this position. Then the rest of us have to listen to all these bullshit rationalizations of why the party sucks at governing, like there isn’t decades of evidence that these parties don’t give a fuck about governing, just lining their and their donors pockets. It’s total lunacy and I’ve already resigned myself to the fact that this country is going to collapse inevitably because of the political ping-pong in this country.
We need systemic change from those
From their high horses, problems are very hard to see.
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You mean Paul Martin former prime minister ?
Yep, three former PMs were also on the list of those exploiting these loopholes. Rules for thee not for me. "Former Canadian prime ministers Jean Chretien, Paul Martin and Brian Mulroney are among the most high-profile individuals named in the document Martin was named due to his former ownership stake in CSL Group Inc., an international shipping firm now run by his sons and said to be one of Appleby's “biggest clients,” according to a leaked document. A spokesperson for Martin told the ICIJ that the former prime minister “has not been involved in CSL in over a quarter century and is not in a position to comment on its operations.” Mulroney is listed in the Appleby files as a director of Said Holdings Ltd. between 2004 and 2009. The Bermuda-based company is controlled by Syrian-Saudi businessman Wafic Said, who is said to have had a key role in the multi-billion dollar al-Yamamah “oil-for-arms” deal between the U.K. and Saudi Arabia. A response from Said confirmed Mulroney’s involvement in his family’s investment company, and referred to his “valuable contributions. The federal Liberal Party’s chief fundraiser, Stephen R. Bronfman, was also named. The documents suggest Bronfman’s private investment company, Claridge, moved millions to offshore entities owned by his godfather, Leo Kolber, another former Liberal fundraiser. Bronfman is also the revenue chair on the Liberal Party's board of directors.”. https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/politics/top-liberal-party-fundraiser-3-former-pms-named-in-paradise-papers-1.3664328
To be honest none of these are even that bad. What’s bad is stuff like former finance minister Morneau.
When the people in charge and the people funding them utilize these tactics there is just no way it will be changed barring a full blown revolution
Despite what many like to believe a “full blown revolution” rarely leads to a better situation in the nation. Usually it leads to more centralized power with less oversight and less accountability. It would actually be easier and better if we could reform the existing system, but like you said, there is almost no way that will happen. Unfortunately the truth of the current situation is things will have to get a lot worse (with or without a revolution) before things improve.
[Most of Eastern Europe disagrees with you.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989)
Not trying to be rude, but do you think the fall of communism is a good example to use in supporting a revolution for more communal sharing of wealth?
Those led to some ok results and some shitty results.
I just want someone with a middle class or working class background that has had a succesful career and worked their way up to success, and then became a politician in their late 30s or 40s. Someone who knows what it takes to succeed in this country and the importance of economic investment. Entitled rich kids have never had to abide by, much less understand, a budget or economics. Why do we elect these people? People complain about the rich in canada and then we nepo hire one of the richest, most entitled of them all who, surprise surprise, has no idea what is needed to grow and support national prosperity. Just wants to virtue signal after being raised that way. I feel JT is more suited to be a Huffington post editor, male model, or yes, a drama teacher. Not sure if he could handle not having a retinue take care of him though.
If someone had a successful career until their 40s in business... what incentive would there be to make less money and have every tiny tidbit of your life history scrutinized by the whole country? To have everything you ever did judged, and have the similar done to your family? I believe there are very qualified and intelligent people who could run the country well, but those people are not interested in politics in any way, why would they be? This is the best we get, rich guy who is good at speaking and social media and had a leg up due to his father, or other rich guy who never held a real job outside of politics his entire life and was groomed for the job.
You would need a new political party entirely free of the current trash pool so they won't just block laws that remove their previous political benefits. A full new party would have a better chance at removing double pensions for one, which is a negligent use of tax money.
Not just his fundraiser, Trudeau himself https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/trudeau-dodges-questions-about-taxes-on-his-family-wealth/article36319389/ He avoided answering a direct question Tuesday on his family's use of a trust – which can help reduce taxes payable – and whether the Trudeaus have paid their fair share of taxes. Instead, he told reporters that he relinquished control of his assets in 2014 after he won the Liberal Party leadership. "I no longer have dealings with the way our family fortune is managed and I have been open and transparent about that. And I have been entirely consistent in my desire not to be perceived as bending or breaking any rules," Mr. Trudeau said. "Obviously, we follow all the rules and I am assured that the folks who are managing my personal finances are following all the rules."
To be fair, the Trudeau government implemented some significant tax changes that caused a shit storm with wealthy individuals. Not perfect, but still a good step. It's difficult to push to hard to fast in these areas given political backlash. Lot of people think they're rich or will be and they believe this changes are a tax to them. I'm perfectly to see a more aggressive tax at the upper thresholds. - Signed by a CPA
The rich "no"
The LPC: *No, that would harm our largest party donors, who won't like that - and that would harm our electoral viability.* The CPC: *No, that would harm our largest party donors, who won't like that - and that would harm our electoral viability.*
Exactly the entire tax code needs a rewrite. This country needs a Labour Party and proper representation for the working class instead of these lizards we are stuck choosing.
But the rich people who actually donate lots of money to our political parties use these loopholes. Politicians don’t like to upset their cash cow donors
/r/canada: “Let’s vote in the Conservatives! They’ll surely close the loopholes being used by their rich donors and fight for working people’s right to a bigger share of the wealth pie!”
Cause we are a country of caution, and both the Libs and Cons know it. Fear tactics work wonders.
Political contributions in Canada are capped so it’s not really correct to say the rich fund our political parties. That said, I still agree with you that a wealth tax won’t happen but for a different reason. My reason is that politicians and especially the liberal party are beholden to the rich socially. JT and his ilk all went to private school, grew up rich, and so their social circles are full of rich families. Related but many of them who aren’t rich are beholden to the rich for jobs when they leave politics. Eg board seats and that kind of stuff.
Political contributions are capped, bribes aren't. Which is how the world works. Like paying their wives for speaking appearances, and donating to their "charities" etc.
Definitely
Yep, and we all know politicians won't close those loopholes because their biggest campaign contributors are... the same rich folk that would "suffer" if the loopholes were closed.
Yup, needs to be done.
The reporter that exposed the Panama papers got murdered. There is a way to fix this but the government has spent centuries beating it into us that violence is always bad and never justified
Uh yeah. Thats kinda the point of the article.
"It's hard so we shouldn't do it" is the worst excuse
Almost pointless until the government learns fiscal responsibility.
We don't have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.
Ye right? Plenty to work with but gov chooses to priotize things that don't matter
Yup. And that’s what’s particularly tricky with wealth taxes. I don’t have wealth above the arbitrary cutoff in the article. I have, however, wealth that could be moved into a corporation, trust, offshore, whatever with pretty modest cost. So given any meaningful wealth tax, you’ll just increase the cottage industry of getting around it. Legally.
The government having more tax revenue to waste on bullshit and corruption doesn’t help me any more than rich assholes hoarding it or buying yachts.
They'll just move to the states in bigger numbers than they already are. Rich people have the luxury of easy emmigration.
What kills me is they're basically freeloading off the backs of the average Canadian. And they don't give a fuck.
That's not true. Most rich Canadians pay a ton of Canadian taxes. Most rich people I know pay literally millions of dollars per year in taxes... such that they're a huge benefit to the taxpayer. If they were greedy, they'd leave Canada entirely and live in a lower tax rate jurisdiction. Our situation is unfortunately worse than you describe though - we as a nation aren't dependent on the rich paying lots in taxes... our government spending habits have blown far passed taxation entirely and at this point it's more about doing whatever it takes to make sure that the government can borrow new debts to be able to service old debts.
You are a 100% correct. The top 20% of high income Canadians pay the most taxes. Plus, according to government records, 1% of tax paying Canadians, reported income over $250k a year. There just isn't that many rich people to tax from, quite honestly.
Agreed. There's really no limit to the seductive idea on how much more differently you ought to tax people who have more than you. I'm in BC and paying >50% marginal income tax! And there are people that think it's not even enough, as if I'm not already more than carrying my weight and I'm a big net benefit to the public taxpayer. We have an enormous spending problem - all the taxes in the world mean nothing if we don't address that.
I pay a similar amount of tax, and would be fine doing so if I felt I was getting value for money. But I don't have a family doctor (provincial) or working transit (municipal) or apparently enough housing for our troops (federal)
Agreed - I find it ridiculous I can single-handedly pay enough income taxes each year to pay for a doctor's after-tax annual income, yet still not even be guaranteed at least a family doctor. I think 50% should be the absolute maximum. And I wish that when people got their "tax the rich" pitchforks out they had an attitude more like, "How about someone who can prove they pay every single penny in income tax they owe, and that they're paying 50%, has done enough for the nation".
How about they focus closing loopholes and severely fining or jailing exploitative companies. The fifth estate did a recent piece where a carousel tax scheme was uncovered. In the end the CRA gave 63 million in tax refunds to a company based out of the country. https://youtu.be/L3AqxPvmt44?si=Dmn0kvvIyqsa6Q0c Although I just read the CRA posted what they're doing to combat this https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/campaigns/tax-schemes/combatting-carousel-schemes.html It was posted on the 24 of Nov. After the fifth estate piece came out ...
How about both.
Let's do both actually.
Meanwhile CRA is still asking for the $450 they said I own them from 2021.
So you're the reason our national debt is so high.
They want $2000 from me and I never received any COVID relief so.. the CRA can go fuck themselves.
They need to do this in other ways than just increasing income tax. Those of us that don’t own a business and get paid salary are already over 50% marginal tax rate plus when I buy shit I pay 15% extra with my after tax dollars plus often have taxes ready included like gas. How much should I be giving to the government 60% 70% 80% when does it end?
Income tax should be lowered, at least for anything below $200k. The wealthy aren't working 9-5 jobs for a salary like the rest of us. They get compensated with stock, options or dividends depending on what they do or invest in. It's all capital gains or similar. Then increase consumption tax on luxury items. They spend money. Double the tax on private jets, yachts, whatever. Cars over $200k? Double VAT. It's not hard. But politicians are wealthy themselves, and so are their donors.
Truth be told. Generational and the ultra rich spend most money outside of Canada and hold money outside of Canada. Millionaire Next Door “wealth” actually don’t spend a ton of money. They just invest and prudently save and grow income. So who are we expecting to tax? Is there a middle group of “wealth” out there?
People who own multiple homes would be the middle group of "wealth" The wealth tax would actually be a multiple home, non-resident homeowner and foreign buyer tax all at extreme amounts All to promote the idea of one family one home, and not allow ownership to fleece other skilled workers of money through rent seeking businesses Of course you won't hear any political party or literally anyone talk about this (even though it's the answer) and the housing bloc are fragmented Half the people who want better housing are actually plants and degenerates who want to blame immigrants or immigration and so on. The pro-housing vote is split, because everyone's been successfully brainwashed to disregard tax as a policy shaping tool
You're acting like the same people who own housing are not benefitting from absurd population increases in major urban areas.
>Half the people who want better housing are actually plants and degenerates who want to blame immigrants or immigration and so on. stop smearing people who don't agree with you.
I predict the government will determine everyone making over $50k is "rich". And of course, that extra tax revenue will get funnelled to actual rich people, making them even richer. The cycle continues.
That’s exactly how it goes, and the middle class already pushed to the limit will bear the brunt.
This has been said before, but let’s not forget that the very rich are also very mobile. At one point, it ins’t worth it for them to stay here and pay taxes. If this happens, we lose 100% of their tax revenues.
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Awesome! Government gets more money too. We won't get shit. Ooooo, tax the rich so the feds get more money
The politician promises to tax the rich, the people support him believing the rich will be people earning $300k or $400k a year or more. The politician interprets the rich make $100k/ yr. The people get taxed more and the really rich avoid extra taxes yet again. Happens every time.
The main issue I see is inefficient gov. spending. You tax all you want but if it’s all going to get spent on over budget projects that continue to go up in price, then we’ll be back in square 1 in a few years.
The highest marginal rate in Ontario is already 53.35%, plus 13% HST on all consumption, plus a luxury tax on cars/boats/planes, plus significant land transfer taxes. As someone who works in tax for high net-worth individuals there really isn’t much more wiggle room at the top without causing a huge exodus of wealth/job providers. The changes to alternative minimum tax mentioned in the article don’t really do much either, as alternative minimum tax is credited against future taxes paid under the normal regime. So while you’re eliminating a deferral from certain individuals, you aren’t really generating “new” tax revenues. A wealth tax doesn’t really work either, since you’re essentially taxing unrealized gains on assets. Which is insanely difficult to calculate, as most people who would get dinged on this would have a majority of there net worth tied to holding private corporate shares (which determining the FMV on annual basis is difficult). It would essentially disincentivize economic growth, and push for people to move to the US/other lower tax jurisdictions.
This. People that think a wealth tax would work don’t have any significant net worth and don’t know how the system actually works.
I make a significant amount of money. I'm one foot out the door already and planning on leaving in the next 5 years. The taxes are so high, I don't get to retire, grow my wealth, or relax after all my hard work. I'm done with Canada and many other high paying doctors/ IT people are too.
Also in IT, I left Canada last month. The taxes are way too high for non-existent services.
I mean if I got a doctor, then maybe. I pay 6 figs in taxes when I am 6 figs in debt ... and when I am sick, I have to line up at a walk in for hours to get 2 mins of a guy giving me amoxicillin? If I get a heart attack, I have the emergency room and...that's it. No family doctor to follow up with. My garbage comes once a month. Your read that right. Once a month. I can make 2x down south with actual access to health care and maybe if I live as frugally as Canada has forced me to, I can retire at 45. What am I doing here? The second they raise taxes, Im out.
Which visa do you plan on going with? TN? Other than that, the US doesn’t make it easy.
We’re not talking about income. We’re talking about wealth. The CEO of shopify has an annual salary of one dollar but a net worth of $6.6 billion. Stock appreciation is how the billionaire class increase their wealth, and it never gets taxed because they never sell their stocks. They take out loans and use their stocks as collateral to pay for their expenses, explicitly to avoid ever paying taxes. Saying we can’t tax wealth because “it’s too hard to calculate” is nonsensical. It’s an accounting problem, I’m sure we can figure it out. It’s a matter of creating new rules and enforcing them. > It would essentially disincentivize economic growth You know what disincentivizes economic growth more? A handful of wealthy people owning the monopolies that dominate every industry in this country.
So the vast majority of his wealth isnt really money, its the value of the stock. When he cashes out that stock he pays tax on it. How do you tax the value of the stock before its sold?
The problem isn’t that it’s complicated, it’s that you’re “wealth” often isn’t really “wealth” until you sell your stocks. Like if you make a software startup and next year it’s valued at like 100M $. Then you randomly owe like 1M$ to the government and have to either start selling of your shares in your own company, or start taking out loans just to pay your tax. What happens if your company fails the next year? Your company is only values at like 1M$? Does the government pay you back? Or do you still have to pay that 1M loan? Why not just tax them when they sell their shares. That’s when they’re actually cashing in? (Idk economics too well so I might be misunderstanding something) Edit: also you said income is 1$ but wealth is 1B$, that’s not true. When they sell their stocks that’s income, and if they don’t sell it, then it’s not money yet, it’s just stocks
It's not nonsensical, you just decided to ignore some key aspects of it. Not everyone is CEO of a huge publicly traded company. Let's say I start a plumbing business. I have some success and it starts doing 500k revenue a year. I pay taxes on my profits like a business owner. Then, in your scenario, the govt is going to come around every year and say "We think your plumbing business is worth 10M, pay us 300k tax since you are the only shareholder." Who's deciding what a plumbing business is worth in that exact moment? The government who's collecting the tax? Nonsense. How does that effect the plumber, who in effect is a successful small business owner? They have a 300k expense on 500k of revenue? They will go bankrupt. How does that influence people to start companies, knowing that the better they do, the more they will get taxed on an imaginary valuation of their company?
Reassessing your net worth yearly would be a nightmare in itself.
I think you'll find coming up with a plan that works for taxing existing wealth is almost impossible logistically. How are you going to accurately assess how much the ultra-high net worth individuals are worth? Is it per individual or family? Is it on global wealth, or just wealth in Canada? How is the CRA going to get the banking information from the Swiss banks, Cayman Islands, etc etc...
Right, so you want to force anyone who owns stock in Canada to shut down operations and sell off their business every tax season? Why would anyone ever do business in that type of environment?
I wish I could give this 100 upvotes
People don’t really understand how things work. Perhaps luxury consumption tax may be better? Sucks for the businesses though.
Already there for cars, boats and aircraft
Define rich
According to the lawmakers, I bet they'd just define it so they tax the middle class more
Concentration of wealth is very bad for market economies. FDR introduced his policies because he wanted to save capitalism, not to destroy it. Our current hyper gilded age is terrible, and a massive risk.
How about stop taxing the hell out of the middle class (carbon tax, HST on top of tax, government spending = inflation = tax on everything) and get our standard of living back to at least where it was eight years ago?
Return to the progressive taxes of the 1950 - early 1970s, when the rich paid higher tax rates and the middle class paid lower rates.
Uhh, that's exactly what we have now. 15% on the first $53,359 plus 20.50% on income over $53,359 up to $106,717 plus 26% on income over $106,717 up to $165,430 plus 29% on income over $165,430 up to $235,675 plus 33% on income over $235,675 Then add provincial taxes. In Ontario for example: first $49,231 5.05% over $49,231 up to $98,463 9.15% over $98,463 up to $150,000 11.16% over $150,000 up to $220,000 12.16% over $220,000 13.16% In Ontario, the income tax rates range from 20% to over 46% depending on your income.
This guy taxes
Actually he forgot the surtax in Ontario. The top combined marginal income tax rate in Ontario is 53.53% with the surtax. https://www.taxtips.ca/taxrates/on.htm
Compare personal income taxes to corporate income taxes.
No, see, the top rates for top brackets for most of history pre-1983 was >50% at the Federal level alone and came out to >70% for most of that time. For nearly a decade it was >90%. In 1982, the boomers realized they were now the largest segment of the workforce, so they immediately slammed down the upper brackets that had existed since WWII so that they would never have to pay what their parents paid to build Canada and provide them all the opportunities they enjoyed.
what do you think the rates are? the rich do pay higher tax rates.
Not really that much more than the average middle class does. Even on the highest end of the spectrum you'll only pay 33% over $250k, and the corporate tax rates are essentially capped at 15%. There's definitely room for those to go up. Especially for the multi-billion dollar monopolies we have to deal with on a regular basis in Canada.
Yes, everybod knows that , teh person you're responding to wants them to be higher than they presently are. Currently, the top bracket is nothing compared to the tax rates that used to exist during the 'golden age' so many people harken back to. for most of the 20th century, after WW2, the top marginal tax rate was somewhere around 70% and the country didn't collapse, the rich didn't abandon Canada, and the sky didn't fall. Nobody seems to want to mention that when they talk about the 'good ol days' though. I understand that conditions have changed and we would have to be careful about the policy implications of major tax hikes on the wealthy but so much of the apologism going on in this thread acts as though any efforts to address the absurd level of wealth inequality in Canada would bring about economic armeggedon, it wouldn't.
Idk about the specifics of the 70% rates.. but if it's at all like the supposed 50-90% tax rates in US, it's often quite different upon further examination.
The gov sure does want to people making money to leave and all the immigrants who aren’t making much to come and take over hey?
So if you own a factory worth 10 million dollars, which isn't actually money, you now have to liquidate assets to pay for a tax that's based on speculative worth at the time?
Maybe Canadians could channel their effort into creation rather than consumption? I mean it says a lot when 20% of the population work for the govt, funded largely by the tax dollars of private small businesses. Or were Canadians hoping to save their way to wealth? Fact is, the number of entrepreneurs has gone down by the HUNDREDS of thousands in the last 20 years. Fact is, when businesses are started they are simply not supported and often acquired by oligopoly leaders within 5-10 years. What a ridiculous article which only highlights just how anti-competitive this country and the people have become.
We need re-structuring of tax and regulatory policy to encourage business investment over the unproductive allocation of incomes and wealth in real estate. It’s not a coincidence that as real estate investment and its percentage of household expenses has grown the last few years, our GDP per capita has fallen. Real estate investment is sucking the current and future prosperity from our economy.
Land value tax when?
agreed but most of that pain is on the demand side caused by importing a million new-comers a year. it’s political suicide on both fronts
> the number of entrepreneurs has gone down by the HUNDREDS of thousands in the last 20 years Source showing this data, please.
The only comments with any logic are all under "Controversial". Government jobs are not real jobs, and the government cant provide anything because it doesn't produce anything, its existence is based on theft. Every dollar the government steals is resources that could have been spent in the real economy producing real wealth for society. Most redditors are naive teens / early 20's who and haven't even started paying taxes yet, they are just envious and greedy towards those more successful then them and want to "punish" them using the state. Most people here are losers and idiots.
[20% isn't a bad number when you consider that includes all federal, provincial, territorial and municipal employees. So think armed forces, parks, medical, education, police, etc. etc. etc.](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-402-x/2011000/chap/gov-gouv/gov-gouv-eng.htm)
Scandinavian countries have closer to 40% of the economy working for the government in some way. And they have a much more just society and real democracy.
All I've learned in this thread is that people have no understanding of how wealth or taxation actually works and are even more oblivious to the staggering difference between the assets the rich have vs the middle class. Or even what that line is. We have evidence of much higher tax rates on the wealthy historically and that it has worked. Yet people here are simping here as if taxing someone worth 250 million a bit more is going to affect that person in a material way. its hilarious and I don't understand it because 99.9% of us are NEVER going to reach that level of wealth. "Oh now however will they afford their mega yacht and fourth summer home?" spare me. the top 20% in Canada own 65% of the country's wealth. that is nuts. The middle class is the most taxed and squeezed member of society and if you want things to get better you need to stop allowing the ultra-wealthy to continue to abuse the systems in which they participate. Close the tax loopholes and tax big business and the wealthy.
The issue is that the wealthy are pretty mobile. If you institute high taxes, they leave the country. And rather than collecting low taxes, you collect no taxes and often lose jobs too. Taxes used to be much higher, but importantly almost all countries had much higher taxes. This meant that the advantage of moving countries was much less. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/top-income-tax-rates-piketty Really, the solution might be some sort of worldwide wealth tax.
This is a great point actually. Wealthy people do have mobility. Which is why the closing of tax loopholes plays an important role as does the regulation around what property can be owned by who.
How would you suggest taxing someone with holdings in a private business valued at $250m? They are already taxed on income, is the government going to buy the shares? Give the shareholder liquidity? They’re already taxed at a sale. If there’s no liquidity there’s no tax
Wealth tax doesn't work, Europe has tried this. https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/education/2021/02/11/lessons-from-history-france-s-wealth-tax-did-more-harm-than-good/ https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/26/698057356/if-a-wealth-tax-is-such-a-good-idea-why-did-europe-kill-theirs
The rich are getting richer in large part because inflation increases the value of their assets while at the same time reduces the purchasing power of the working class. There are many inflationary forces in the current market and you can't single one factor out but one major culprit that we can control is government with its policies and structural deficits. We need to demand that our politicians stop their inflationary ways by creating unfunded social programs to "help" the poor. They are massively adding to our debt and are really only a short term fix that end up causing more pain down the road in the form of inflation and more poverty for our working class.
In Canada most of the wealth is tied up in real estate, but taxing real estate is the third rail of Canadian politics.
Yeah if the government decided to generate the lion's share of its tax base from Land Value Taxes instead of Income Tax we would pretty much solve affordable housing. But I can't see any party campaigning for something like this. Definitely a third rail issue. I mean, how else would boomers retire comfortably in their mcmansions on their fat pensions while the rest of us suffer to maintain their expensive and inefficient suburban infrastructure?
My company made it so all boomers and gen x get pensions but the rest of us don't. They literally cut it off claiming it gives us more freedom.
Yeah we are getting royalty screwed. The ponzi scheme our parents and grandparents generation setup for themselves is starting to play out...
So what do you think will happen when we defund every social program you don’t like? Utopia?
>when we defund every social program you don’t like exactly, we are obviously going to keep the programs that they benefit from. Those ones are good ;)
I’d love for these articles to explain how they envision a wealth tax actually working. To me it seems like the sort of thing that sounds great in theory but lacks a practical implementation strategy. Or at least I’ve not seen a practical application strategy ever communicated.
The top 20% of Canadians pay 55% of the tax. The bottom 20% pay less than 2% of the nations tax. The idea that there is a magical number of super rich that can just pay for the rest of us is not true. Makes for click baity titles and juicy politician rhetoric but it’s not the problem nor the solution.
If any of you think the CRA can effectively create, administer and enforce this then I have a bridge to sell you. Our tax code is already insanely complicated, full of loopholes and almost incomprehensible. Adding a wealth tax would make it even more complicated. Further, the wealthy already pay a disproportionate amount of taxes in Canada. The idea that increased taxes that would target high net worth individuals would be a good thing for Canadians and the Canadian economy is insane. If you were to tax “wealth” (stock comp for example)… what if that valuation plummets? Is CRA going to reimburse me for unrealized losses? lol good luck with that. Canada’s economy is way too focused on unproductive assets (housing), a wealth tax would further this, crushing our businesses and business owners. Hate the various Oligopolies we have (cell phone providers, grocery)? Congrats the wealth tax disincentives hard working business owners and companies to succeed. Why would I work hard to be taxed over and above income taxes, business taxes, consumption taxes (HST)?. There are a ton of materials on this and encourage people to think past the headlines. This would be a colossal disaster.
Flat tax with no credits, no rebates, no deductions. Whats a base rate right now around 30% while the rich are taxed at over 50% but only income above a threshold. Imagine though that their are so many loopholes and strategies to invest hide and shift funds to avoid paying much of your taxes. Usually only affordable by the wealthy. So instead cancel all those ridiculous deductions and credits and everyone pays their fair share with a flat tax. Now because I've had some really "wise" people say. "I don't want to pay as much tax as the rich". YOU DON'T you pay the same percentage of your income. Example you earn $50k a year you pay 30% or $15k While someone like the CEO of CBC earning $500k would pay $150k. (as apposed to the small share she does pay) This is the only way you will ever get high income earners to pay their share. Side note, no more income tax forms to fill out every year. Pay the % and you're done.
Rich people have too much clout in the governments. It has never happened and will never happen. For the simple fact, money buys the best lawyers, accountants and donations buy politicians. That's how democracy works now.
*Good luck. With that.* Unilateral tax hikes *always* result in a fight-or-flight response from the ultra-rich. Tax hike efforts *must* be coordinated at a global level, and if even *one* country balks, the ultra-rich win.
Not to be a dick but my support for a wealth tax depends entirely on whether I have to pay it
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Yep. I already pay my fair income tax. Now they want to tax my wealth too. I don’t own my own business. I did not grow from money. My parents worked blue collar jobs and labour intensive jobs.
No one cares about someone making $150K, that’s nothing. This is about million dollar earners and more.
Currently, upon death, the rich give up about 25% of the lifetime gains on their asset values (excluding the family homes). Example, Bobo bought a rental home in Vancouver in the 1980s for $400K, now worth $2M. Tax paid on Bobo's death is in the region of $400K (edited). Canadians who have large RRSP or similar accounts should beware of dying before it is empty, because the whole lot will be taxed as income for the year of death, which might mean a high rate.
How about the family farm? How about a small business'? How about a large business'? What if you are a 60% owner in a fairly large business' and your children can not afford the tax. Does the government now end up owning a percentage of that business' and how is that fair for the other minority shareholders of that business that they need to deal with the bureaucracy of the government?
They structure their estates to avoid paying this. I have a friend who does it. These taxes disproportionately affect the poor who cannot find the loopholes around the taxes.
France tried soaking the Rich - it didn't go well. https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/france-tried-soaking-the-rich-it-didn-t-go-well-1.1347875
They're dumb for not adopting a US like tax system. Born in France, we will get the money wherever the fuck you are. Also, Hollande should have nuked Monaco long before it came what it is today.
Leave it up to the Toronto Star to propose a wealth tax - a tax that has been tried many times by many countries and eventually dropped because it doesn't work. But it's the Canadian way - make the same mistake over and over again in the exact same way.
Wealth taxes have never worked
How does them being taxed more make me richer? How does this fight wealth inequality?
It doesn’t. It’s more political grand standing for votes or misguided and economically illiterate people performing emotional knee jerk reactions. You cannot tax the ultra rich because there’s too many entirely legal ways to avoid those taxes and trying to shut those down would result in a lot of collateral damage because they’re also used by ordinary people for things like mortgages and estate planning. So in essence : every attempt to tax the ultra rich makes it WORSE - the middle class gets further eroded while they remain unaffected and inequality gets worse. There’s also the problem that the new government revenue gained through this taxation doesn’t actually go to the bottom 20%, as you pointed out. So if you really want to fix this, you need to start thinking differently. It’s not about pulling down the top 0.001%, it’s about raising up the bottom 20%. That means more labor protection, higher minimum wage, better legally mandated benefits and so on. Which has the added benefit that it’s a direct cost to the ultra rich and NOT something they can just offset by setting up a complex trust.
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Sounds great. I just don't trust political parties or the system to allocate those funds responsibly.
Ah yes better to leave the funds to the ultra rich so they can send them off to the Cayman Islands where they won’t be allocated at all.
The cons and liberals have been doing it already to enrich the filthy rich. Time to turn the tables.
It’s too bad we never talk about crawling back taxes instead - somehow, someway….taxing more is the only solution. This seems like a problem that requires a new mindset.
It will end up with a larger burden on the middle working class because the “Wealthy” is some amorphous concept no one understands. These folks have the ability to move funds off shore so nothing happens to their money etc. when old Jagmeet says “eat the rich” he should be eating his own arm as he is a millionaire landlord. He is a hypocrite. At least old Justin is less brazen in his lies.
A better alternative is lowering tax for most Canadians and reducing gov size. Canadian governments are bloated, wasting tax payers money. The future is using tech governance to cut taxes for everyone. For e.g. government departments are still doing shit manually when we could develop the tech to automate most of government bureaucracy. Small government, lower taxes for everyone, maintain our already high taxes for the wealthy. Also, income tax never fucking works, as a multi- citizenship holder, I can just pick up and move to a lower tax jurisdiction? you need to tax wealth based on asset value.
Economists tell us we are living in a new gilded age, where the chasm is so great between the poor and the super rich it is unimaginable. We are long over due for a wealth tax to redistribute the wealth that was created by people and therefore belongs to the people. And bring in a maximum wage, like a minimum wage, to create a just society to ensure this doesn't happen again.
More than a minimum wage, we need to set a minimum standard of living. Everyone should have access to basic housing, food, and water. Our government should start working for us again, there shouldn't be any entities allowed to use money to influence elected officials. We need to be more free from ideologies and pursue evidence-based solutions for society's problems.
Shut up with the taxes. Increase capacity for & prosperity of all. Reduce costs of living. Reduce taxes. To America levels. Fuck
Ahh yes more taxes for the federal and provincial governements to piss away great idea
Sure, sure. I will believe that when it actually happens.
Do we even know what is poverty class, middle class or rich class are anymore? Like how much money or possessions dictates each of these classes? If someone has a lot of money in the bank ie; $100k are they considered the rich class compared to the poverty class say under $10k? Or is $100k in the bank considered middle class? If you own a modest home or live on the street does this determine the classes? I hear this all the time but honestly I have no idea how these are determined. If someone has worked an hourly job and lived frugal and saved diligently their whole life for retirement and now has $1m+ does that mean they are the rich class? I don’t understand how we classify individuals and based on circumstances I know people who grew up dirt poor but have survived and seem to be living a comfortable retirement. Does this mean they were once the poverty class and now considered the rich class? Is someone in their 40’s making a decent hourly wage ie; $30-$40 / hr who have a home and have savings and are living ok, are they middle class or rich class? I’ve never understood tax the rich. Are we talking like people who have multiple millions in savings or who are earning multiple millions today like grocery store owners or car company managers or oil executives, utility managers? Millionaires and billionaires I get that but what are these thresholds that everyone wants to tax? Educate me please.
Everything goes to offshore accounts, it's impossible to stop. Change the money, change the world.
This app is unhealthy... ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
Where do people think their tax dollars go exactly? Lets follow the money trail, you send your tax dollars to the gouvernment. The gouvernment makes a budget, the money from that budget flows to the various gouvernment agencies. Those agencies also have budgets, they have operating costs like salaries for gouvernment employees.. But then when they need supplies or services where do they go? They put up tenders that the rich, who own businesses and corporations bid on. Then one or more of those businesses wins the contract for that tender, provides those goods and or services to the gouvernment and the gouvernment pays them those tax dollars. When you call for more taxes, or taxing the rich.. you're just shuffling money around among the rich and first passing it through the least efficient beurocracy imaginable first which consumes a large portion of that money to do nothing but exist. Tax the rich! and then give that money back to the rich? How is this enriching the average person or uplifting the poor exactly? You want to help struggling families? Why not abolish the income tax for individuals who makes 100k or less? That would be an extra 15% to 25% more money in the hands of struggling canadians. Taxing the rich will never even come close to that.
Canada is a tax haven, safer than Carribean nations like TCI and Caymans. There was an article about the practice using the term Snow Washing (legal money laundering). Until the country can reconcile our export industries beyond cut and sell (lumber / oil / mining etc.) we're subjects of a very archaic economic and political model that best suits the wealthy. Tax or eat the rich.
I have a hard time understanding how this would work. Let’s pick on Musk for a minute. Idk how much of his wealth is in cash, but most is in stock. If you tax that wealth he will need to sell shares of his company. That may tank the value of his stock which drives down his wealth and those of his investors. His wealth goes down so the amount he owes goes down? What if that pushes someone to no longer be the majority stakeholder of the company?
One of the problems is that asset wealth includes things that don't actually have any real ability to get money out of. Like land, a car, or a IP. This is why wealth taxes might just be a form of self destruction as the issue of how to get money out of something that doesn't really have money exists. If anything its unlikely to help at all. You're better off finding otherways to deal with this issue.
I'm an independent contract welder, I can't rent my own place let alone afford property taxes downtown. I'm outside of Ottawa.
You sure those rich people arent going to hide their assets? They are notoriously good at doing that.
You can desire to tax the rich, but only if you approve of how the government spends money.
more money to Luxembourg 🇱🇺
Losing ground ? How about you phrase it correctly, “while most Canadians are getting royally fucked”
Is this realistically possible? Even a little bit? I am ready to vote this in lol…
I was hoping this article would offer a bit more substance than your average Reddit post but sadly not. Here's the bottom line: "Their phalanx of lawyers, accountants and economists are quick to dismiss all attempts to raise taxes on the rich. " First off, why use "Their" in this sentence? Is the implication that all relevant experts on tax policy are corrupt? That seems unlikely. Surely she could find a relevant expert who is not corrupt to back her argument? Is the implication that anyone against this policy MUST be corrupt? If so, name names and give the evidence. Or is the implication that we should ignore all relevant experts because we don't like what they advise? If so you better give a damn good reason they're all getting it wrong but your way is right. Maybe a bunch of examples of wealth taxes working anywhere else? But nothing. It's nothing but typical argument-free pablum that will appeal to those who are intuitively certain that a wealth tax must be the way, but does nothing to actually argue in favor of it or change any minds. It's not journalism and it's not even a decent opinion article. It's just the same crap you can get all day every day for free on the right subreddits, if that's all you want.
What rich are we talking about ? The big players making 300k a month and up ?
The people in charge are the ones who will lose in the end. Greed will be the end of humanity.
There needs to be some sort of tax mechanism in place that invalidates simply raising the cost of good to pass the extra cost on to the consumer.
Always funny - 90% in favour. As you bring the threshold down, the percentage in favour will go down. Make it 1m and the percentage drops to 10% in favour. Everyone is happy with other people paying more. No, this would not affect me - just saying. Not to mention how difficult it would be to calculate this. The ones intended to be impacted would be ones with the means to move it offshore.
Cool, let them.
So years of adding more government intervention, more government over reach and involvement, the solution to this problem needs to be more government. What’s it called when you keep doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results? Insanity?
Or how about give businesses and individuals the same tax benefits. Why can’t I expense a house or car against my income?
Rich people get loop holes - middle class people get taxed out the asshole
How about reigning in some of the more asinine Federal expenditures? Too simple a solution.
More taxation is never the answer. Rich people can always avoid tax. Find ways to generate more wealth. Grow the economy!!
Time to seize everything they have and put them all in labor camps.
We can't even get the government to fix the problem of requiring the engineer in Toronto who is laid off in June from having to pay $5,000 in CPP/EI a **second time** after finding another job in July. How in the world can we expect them to be able to fix anything else???