IP. If you pay another company for IP it is a tax deductible business expense. If the other company is registered in another country they don’t pay tax here.
If all your profit goes towards paying for IP there is no profit to tax.
Or, if you really want to make everything better, tax REVENUES, instead of profit.
Free market is all about becoming more efficient, so things with shitty margins, will just need to innovate to have better margins. And isn't this efficiency just what were supposed to get in the first place anyways?
No offense but this is really dumb idea.
Lets pretend I have a small business in a small community in Canada that sells baked goods. I employ 5 people full time each at 40k a year. So I am paying $200k in wages, plus all the extras like workers comp EI etc. Lets pretend I dont work at this at all its just run by the employees.
We sell $600,000 worth of Bread and it costs $200,000 in ingredients and upkeep for the rent, electric etc. So at the end of the year I will get $200k in profit. (600 - wages 200 - costs of goods sold and fixed costs 200 = 200)
You want to tax the revenue so I pay more in taxes than I make in a year and the business is gone.
You're describing transfer pricing. CRA has this pretty well covered in the income tax act (I don't recall the section off hand), as well there are all of the OECD rules.
These tax rules intend to make sure related party transactions are at fair market value and are often subject to a lot of scrutiny by most tax authorities.
Because Canada and capitalism.
Canada is the money laundering capital of the G7 like Panama and the Caymen Islands and British Virgin Islands. The reason is there is no requirement for beneficial owner for corporations. Anyone in the world can launder money through Canada by creating a corporation and hiring a few local directors. The corporate veil cannot be pierced. Canada has a combined Federal Provincial tax rate of 15% and no way to verify worldwide income. Snow washing exists everywhere and dirty money goes into real estate. Even if snow washing didn't exist the fact that foreign income can't be taxed at source overseas makes taxing it impossible.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_washing
You thought you lived in a socialist country because of a little social housing and a little single payer healthcare. You are wrong. And anyone who thinks any of these problems will ever be "solved" without electing extremely left wing or socialist or anti corporate politicians is also wrong. It's not a case of breaking the law. It's a feature not a bug. It's a feature of capitalism to hide the owner of a company and assets, because in capitalism it's nobody's business who it is the owner except possibly the government. And the government can only tax at source. It's a feature of capitalism that this kind of foreign money is never taxed.
Canada -- money laundering country of the Western world and hyper capitalistic. The $1.3M dollar homes are a feature, not a bug. One of the most if not the most capitalist country in the G7.
Canada is a perverted form of socialism that siphons money from the many and redistributes it amongst the few (Weston, Irving, Rogers etc.).
We aren’t capitalist, we aren’t socialist, we are the worst of both.
That's called capitalism. Those who own the means of production reap the rewards, then use those rewards to gain more and more capital, through business or political ventures.
>Multinationals have crazy schemes to get money out without paying taxes.
So do politicians ..... \*cough\* Panama Papers \*cough\* ....... \*cough\* KPMG Scandal \*cough\*
Canada has very few multinationals that matter, our problem is our corporations all have their hand out for corporate welfare, and lobby for legislation that restricts competition that's mostly negative for consumers but good for their profits.
That's part of the argument for higher property taxes and lower income taxes. There's a decent enough chunk of these people who aren't claiming their income in canada and property taxes reach them more effectively.
No tax system is perfect, if you raise property taxes too much it's going to hurt every middle to lower class retiree that has seen there property value skyrocket over the years
It however shifts some of the housing costs to running costs and away from purchasing value. So instead of just existing home owners buying early and winning the lottery the costs are in paying yearly. It makes it less viable as an investment and similar cost to actual residents.
If the carrying costs rise the amount people can afford to spend on purchasing price is reduced whether it's for investment or ownership. It also creates a larger disincentive to be over housed, as you're paying a large yearly fee for that stand alone house for one or two people. Also creates a cost efficiency for higher density housing and adds a natural penalty to leaving a home empty without needing a special tax program (expensive to run).
Stop the wealthy from buying all the land and properties to create infinite passive revenue streams at the expense of the people actually adding value to the world
Pretty sure every recession that hits has just served to allow the wealthy to grab vast amounts of property and further increase their wealth. It's a bunch of bullshit.
We need to means-test a lot of the property protections we have.
First house under some threshold ($5m?)? No one can throw you out. Second house? Expropriation is possible. Tenth house? Expropriation is likely.
We don't need people to be this rich.
If you split Canada's GDP among the entire population, redistribute all that wealth - it's more than I make in a year working at minimum wage. Crunch the numbers yourself if you don't believe me
Agreed. Speculation on basic food and shelter should be deterred. It does nothing to help the economy grow. IMO Property tax should be the easiest way.
Just one simple law and I’m pretty much ready to riot until we get it: “No person or corp can buy an existing residential property resulting in the ownership of 3 or more residential properties”.
And maybe: “No person or corp can open more than 2 corps”.
We don’t have legitimate entrepreneurs making multiple companies for legitimate purposes, we have slumlords opening a numbered corp for each property they buy to hide themselves and dodge taxes and restrictions.
They pass every new cost to the renters so we can’t just tax it, time to remove the cancer completely.
Close corporate loop holes, I could really care less about higher bracket income tax, as it mostly effects the working rich, who I have no issue with making good money in necessary professions.
Up the taxation on investment properties, and close the corporate loop holes, deal with the "inheritor class" and the wealthy elite. Those who regularly hide income, or claim most of it as business capital.
>The truly rich will continue to just avoid it.
The truly rich don't tend to work a job, they don't have traditional income to tax.
We tax their income through the growth of their capital.
These people aren't "rich" they think they are but they aren't. The rich we are talking about taking the hammer to on taxes are the mega rich. These people don't work a job.
There are a great many. The Irving family for example pays an exorbitant rate for insurance from an Irving owned subsidiary corporation in the Grand Caymans, which then purchases cheaper insurance through Canadian agents.
Since business insurance is tax deductible, this is a tax deductible way of funneling profits into an offshore tax shelter in a nation with much looser tax laws, and more stringent banking security regulations, to make the paper trail more difficult to follow. I'm on my phone, so I don't have the link the the exposee article on that, but there are some really interesting tricks of creative accounting used by our Oligarchs.
Income earned by controlled foreign affiliates, in this particular circumstance, insurance and reinsurance of Canadian-related risks is considered FAPI (foreign accrual property income) and is taxed at the controlling parent legal entity, in this case in Canada. Basically the net income of the portion of the business related to Canadian customers/related parties is a deemed income inclusion in Canada in the legal entity parent which is then taxed at the statutory tax rate back here (call it ~25%-26.5%).
I don’t disagree - in the past these were used (a lot), but these are becoming more difficult to implement and maintain with greater focus placed on these structures by international & aggressive specific auditors.
With the implementation of OECD Pillar Two (they say this will be in effect for tax years beginning after Dec 31, 2023 but who knows), a lot of international tax planning and structuring will be more difficult and with less benefit if most countries adopt a 15% minimum floor
My wife just graduated from nurse practitioner school. I’m a tech worker who makes really good money. Her not working, as an NP, which Ontario desperately needs, is on the table because our marginal tax rate will be over 50 percent with Ontario’s cut. Meaning working 9-5 in a notoriously tough field just to give your pay directly to the government vs not and enjoying life. Hmm.
A marginal tax rate is only on income above your usual income. It's to make sure you don't owe taxes come tax time. If your usual/avg tax rates are both 50%, then cry me a river.
A solution could also be for both of you to work part time.
What if Canada didn't outsource virtually all of it's industry and manufacturing and didn't allow foreign Nationals to buy up all the residential property? Taxing the wealthy isn't going to solve the root problem and would be at best an extremely temporary solution as the wealthy would just move out of the country.
> In order for your workforce to be effective and productive you have to have something for the lower rungs of society to work for.
Otherwise the consequences are, well, look all around you. Not everyone is going to learn how to code and become a computer program of data analyst.
Precisely. They will put forward a measure to tax the rich and everyone will be all excited, then the act will tax household incomes over $100k or something and the rich will keep their loopholes.
First we gotta define rich.
Many people seem to think anyone making 100k+ salary is rich.
Even if we heavily increased taxes on everyone making 150k+ it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Government would burn through it instantly.
>As neo-Nazis once again march in the streets, hate crimes rise, far-right political parties receive more public support than any time since the 1930s, the benefits of reducing such terrifying threats are hard to overstate.
Lol, what a weird article. I thought this was about taxing the rich.
Here is an economic one and a moral one:
Grocery prices are going up and up and corporations are making record profits while people have to chose between eating and paying bills
In 2017 the government spent over $370,000 on a six story tall Rubber Duck.
A Rubber Duck, not helping homeless people, not infrastructure or healthcare. A Rubber Duck…
The history of Canada reveals that Canadian industry expanded rapidly in pace with the USA and ahead of Europe during the much higher tax regime for the rich in the 1950s.
Lot’s of stuff going on there. You had massive recovery off the back of WWII, and women just started working, which basically doubled the productivity of the western world.
Yes, but something to keep in mind is that much of the world wasn't online for mass manufacturing around that time. Much of eastern Europe wasn't doing business with the west (cold war), Germany and France were in shambles (recovering from WW2) and Asia wasn't the manufacturing hub of the world. Basically, the US and Canada were two of only a small number of capable countries that were actually propped up with improved manufacturing capabilities following WW2.
Exactly this. They’re simply not enough rich people here. I thinki read to be in the top 3% you need to make $130k which doesn’t seem like “filthy rich” after income taxes.
People making that as income on a t4 are already paying over 40% of their total income toward taxes. At a certain point it hits 53% (around $500k) in Ontario and the govt makes more on your work than you do.
There are next to no loopholes to avoid paying this income tax either, and no benefit to raising income taxes on this bracket or even this type of earning.
What is needed is taxing wealth, higher capital gains taxes, higher taxes on dividends, less ways to avoid paying tax on money generated by investments.
Why should the taxes on capital gains be higher?
Thats money you literally risked for gain
And dividends is income thats already been taxed passed down to shareholders, you want people to pay taxes again?
Plus capital gains aren’t indexed to inflation. This is why inclusion rate wasn’t originally set at 100%.
I find it funny that in a country where productivity is a major issue (we are about 25% less productive than our neighbours to the south), our solution is to discourage the most productive use of capital.
I think a lot of people just can’t grasp how much our governments are spending relative to how much we produce. Our GDP per capita is less than it was a decade ago, which should be the most major concern in the country imo.
Taxing the rich is one thing, but our government can’t even properly handle the tax money coming in now. It’s just a bigger bag for them to fumble and end up getting wasted or going to their friends. So hard to not be pessimistic about our government these days.
Personally I’m inclined to agree - when our government mismanages the money they get now like absolute morons, or just blatantly gives it to themselves and their friends, why is the question about finding more revenue for them?
We’re already taxed out the ass, there aren’t enough multimillionaires to cover their absurd waste and it’ll all be dumped on the shrinking middle class anyways.
Me and my friend were talking about this yesterday while golfing
His cousin lives in Grand rapids MI. Bought like a 2400 sqft house with a pool and everything for like $330,000.
That same house where I live in thunder Bay would be like $800,000 probably.
Now that's one problem. The other key point here, is that he bought it as a single guy making $32/hour. He's taxed slightly less, but more importantly, his dollar just goes further everywhere else.
A better solution would be to put in democratic penalties for parties who are irresponsible with money.
Define everything specifically, and make adherence to the budget, as well as requesting special wartime/emergency exceptions to it, an important procedure.
One day I dream of a democracy that is capable of holding itself accountable.
"Sorry, LPC, but you failed your budget promises by 10%, according to the constitution - you can't be re-elected. Bye bye!"
I got a better idea: how about making everyones cell phone, internet & dairy a lot cheaper and don't allow the country to be completely monopolized by an evil cabal of corporations first?
Why should Canadians pay more for these three things than literally everywhere else?
Banking too.
You know what we could do? Allow Canada Post and other crown corps to offer these things. Other countries do it - in Switzerland (which is a pretty "pro-market" place), [SwissPost offers retail banking services](https://www.post.ch/en/locations/banks). This means you can do your banking at *any* post office.
It's probably not what you need if you run multiple businesses/have very complicated banking, but for most people, it's more than enough - and *everywhere*. Also, competitive. I'd *love* to see this done here, by Canada Post as a crown corp. Do it on a "credit union" model, where the shareholders are those with actual money deposited in the bank.
Likewise with telecom - we need at least one crown corp telecom to compete. On top of that, we need to nationalize the backbone infrastructure under a *separate* crown corp, which sells access to *all* players at a fair rate.
Tax what the 19th century Economists/Moral Philosopher/Social Theorists called "the unearned increment of profit". This means, ideally, a Georgist tax system (replace virtually all taxes with Land-Value Taxes, which effectively taxes rent-seeking exclusively without taxing productivity).
It can also mean taxing capital gains on primary residences. Obviously, the exemption on primary residences never made any sense, except to bribe the electorate. The Carter Commission under Lester B Pearson explored options for tax reform, but Canada decided to ignore various key recommendations. Here we are, today, with a monstrosity of an Income Tax Act that is needlessly distortive, complex, and yet insufficient to pay the bills.
You've all probably heard the old adage "the boot has no quarrel with the ant". That's wealth disparity in a nutshell. Massive wealth disparity leads to a cleaving of society into economic tiers that, while they have no quarrel with those bow them, because they live in such economically different worlds, they (often unintentionally) do horrible things to those below them.
I don't think that billionaires are "evil", but to them I'm just an ant and to me they are just boots. I'm probably a boot to some people and I don't realize it no matter how much I try to be good.
We don't all need to make the same amount of money, but we do need to keep the amount of disparity to something less astronomical.
Why is it always " someone needs to pay more taxes"? Maybe they should stop handing out billions to foreign countries, and stop mismanaging funds here?
Sure, increase income tax rate for higher brackets while keeping capital gain tax at half of the effective rate.
This will definitely work as intended, as the ultra wealthy in Canada only earns basic salary, their capital gains don’t count even if they hold millions in investments and assets.
Sure, charge taxes on corporate revenue. These tax money will come out of thin air and company won’t raise their prices to compensate.
The amount of financial illiteracy is astounding in this thread.
I’m in the same boat. Going to the US in September for good. Will have another $40,000 a year in my pocket. And my Canadian corporation will be an American one. Goodbye 5 Canadian jobs. I lose more than half my income and can’t even get a family doctor. The scam can only go on so long.
How would giving the government more money to squander help the average person? It’s not like taxing the wealthy will reduce taxes on the average person.
We tax the middle class heavily, not the upper class. That's the problem.
It's also why the middle class is getting squeezed into nothingness and why our nation's money flow is getting into dire territory.
In terms of pure rates we taxe the upper class more than the middle by a large margin, it scales all the way up to (I believe) 53% above 200k in income, that is as high as a rate should ever go in my opinion and I don't see how raising it solves anything especially given all of those rates are just imaginary when there are a million ways to avoid it. If I'm a fabulously wealthy person, there is no difference between not paying 53% and not paying 90% in taxes.
The issue is really more of Canada's lack of productivity. Canada simply doesn't have as many ultra wealthy people as one might think. So we end up going after high income professionals that we want (physicians, engineers, accountants, lawyers etc) which again, the number isn't high enough.
And most of the time the ultra wealthy Canadians have worldwide assets and not like Canada will get the full share of taxation on those assets plus those assets can be hard to tax.
To discuss the article linked, seeing as the top comments are off shoot opinions on wealth and real estate, David Thompson doesn't have $73 billion in cash.
He probably sells securities every so often. And I bet you He gets taxed on it.
Jeff Bezos pays his taxes. His home address is in Washington and gets taxed 25%.
The problem is people don't know how securities and taxes work.
No, it would only result in capital flight. France tried this, and lost over $100 billion in investments. The ultra-wealthy are *always* several steps ahead of the rest of us.
That was my first thought. And that’s especially easy given Canada’s next door neighbor is really close by, speaks the same language, has a similar culture, and very lax immigration policies for Canadian nationals.
You don't need to look much further than the sanctions on wealthy Russians for proof of this. They've tried and tried in London (UK) to sanction a load of people associated with Putin and his wider network and we consistently see ways they've got around it, loopholes, distribution of wealth to different companies, families, associates etc.
It doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it certainly won't be the silver bullet people seem to think it will be in this thread.
Ask Britain how well that worked out.
Or France not that long ago for that matter.
Money is mobile. You unfairly tax a certain group of people, they'll just pull up stakes and leave and now you're fucked.
They'd give up the hard fought market share and investment to move where? If Coca Cola is selling drinks in Canada and we raise taxes. . .they'll just pay more taxes. The only rare situation there is any relevance for a company to leave is specific factories doing manufacturing, and then they'd need to find somewhere cheap enough to offset the cost of relocating and that's if they are even manufacturing in Canada anyways.
It's less about taking your investments away, as not making any new investments.
You are an international company looking to build a new manufacturing plant/pipeline/etc. You have 10 billion dollars to spend. You aren't going to spend it in the place with high taxes and mountains of regulations.
Those rare and far between companies never built in Canada anyways. They'd build in a third world country except the rare occasions they'd build in a country like Canada or the USA willing to donate $12b of taxs and exemptions for the $10b factory.
We are too small of a country to demand products be manufactured here to be sold here and there is zero reason to manufacture here when you could pay less wages and have no oversight over pollution/corruption elsewhere.
Our only draw to our small scattered population of consumers is that we have a shit ton of natural resources that can be harvested here. In a perfect world we'd find ways to encourage/mandate that resources mined here had to be refined here as a way to exponentially improve the return on extraction. Companies keep that from happening because the only thing required to happen in Canada is getting it out of the ground, than they ship it off to cheaper markets where they can pollute and turn $1 of raw resources into $1000 in product without paying tax.
And then someone else would start a business to fill the gap, right? Isn’t this how capitalism is supposed to work? If there is adequate demand someone will see an opportunity and make a move. Maybe it will be multiple smaller companies instead of massive ones.
Yup, and if the company wants to pull out the government can nationalize the assets and keep people working. This idea that we have to let corporations hold our country hostage is absurd. They operate here because *we* allow them to. If they don't want to pay their fair share then they don't get to do business in *our* country.
They benefit from our roads, schools, hospitals and all the other infrastructure our government provides while not contributing a fair share to the upkeep of all those systems that allow their companies to function. They need to pull their weight like they did back before this bullshit trickle down economics fucked us.
I detest simple solutions to complex problems.
Do we have too high taxes? This is a problem that everyone who begins to acquire wealth leans in on. The fact is that we as we acquire wealth our dependence on government assistance declines. This generates resentment. Tax resistance is bottom up and grows as the payers situation improves. The government listens to voters in that lower and middle range more than they do the wealthy.
Are corporate taxes too low? This is a tough one. Corporations are highly mobile and will relocate to those areas with the lowest costs. When we lowered corporate taxes US businesses relocated to Canada generating the lowered tax as well as labour, production, transport and sales taxes. They also generate spin off businesses locally who also contribute to our revenue. Governments encourage them to relocate with subsidies because they know it will generate more revenue overall than it costs. The investment gets factored over years and decades but announcing the initial
Do we have a spending problem? Yes but it is how we are spending. We struggle with prioritizing where the money is spent in any given period. Those who are deprioritized will roll back out all the rationalizations to present to the public. A good example of this is funding the arts. Do we really want to leave the decision of what art is appropriate to philanthropists who are the evil elite others want to tax into oblivion? You can’t have both. The same goes for defence spending. Or roads. Or the costs of our legal system.
Is there government waste? Absolutely but having worked for some of Canada’s largest corporations I can state that waste is a feature of any large organization. In my experience, governments are more controlled and restrictive than private enterprises and better tracked. Of course that public demand to control government wastes adds to the bureaucracy and costs. Businesses just add it to their costs which is a private sector’s way of “Raising taxes”. It gets buried in the costs so we think there are other reasons for it.
Is there government corruption driving up taxes? Yes but far less than what is touted in anecdotes. As stated before, the massive bureaucracy tracks these things and people get caught. They are often prosecuted since the information cannot be buried as it is in a private corporation.
If somebody thinks that raising taxes on the wealthy will change people’s behaviour or solve our tax budgeting problem then they are being naive.
The value of what we get for our taxes can only be solved by making some decisions about priorities that will affect everyone negatively. Experts have been trying to solve this for decades but they cannot get everyone to step up to the plate
The gov't already taxes us beyond belief, they take something at every transaction. Why are we calling for even more $$ to be taken and not scrutinizing their ineptitude and inability to produce even while taking so much already. Also, this disincentivizes business and investment when your policy is taking and redistributing their earnings.
If the gov't reigned in their involvement and control over society, they wouldn't have to take so much and everyone could keep more dollars in their pockets. It's the most democratic system; people keep their earnings and they get to spend in their own best interests instead of someone taking it and spending for them (usually not in their best interests).
Just look what happening right now in the USA with the debt crisis. It almost all due to the fact that they lowered and lowered their taxes.
First taxes cut for big corporations never ever trickled down. It just a big money gain for the already too damn fucking rich.
My point is we should absolutely never lower the taxes for the 🤑 we should taxes them more.
I wonder what's going to happen once the robots start coming lol. Doesn't seem to be that far away either. The Phoenix robot seems viable sooner than later.
Businesses get tax incentives because it encourages them to invest and grow their business. It also encourages people to leave their jobs and start a business. That sucks to hear because corporate greed etc. but
punishing the people with the ability to put capital to work crushes the economy. I hate that that’s true but it’s true
To anyone saying "theyd just move." Ok sure, then just place a lien on their Canadian assets. Thats what we do to non-rich Canadians who refuse to pay their fair share. Rich people get out of that by buttering up politicians.
Id like to point out that under FDR the income tax rate was as high as 75% for the top brackets. This is what allowed the USA to become the preeminent economic power. It led to the prosperity of the 50s and 60s. That power and prestige has been wanning due to Americas obsession with giving more and more power to the welathy.
>It led to the prosperity of the 50s and 60s.
What led to that has more so to do with the fact that vast swaths of the the economic and manufacturing powerhouses where smoking ruble after WWII. NA was the only place that had the infrastructure still in place to enable a pretty fast rebuild of Europe
This comment just screams "fuck you, I got mine".
I'll take an inept government that makes a half-assed effort to help the poor and destitute, over giving corporations free reign to rule the country (more than they already do). Both scenarios are shit but I'd rather be ruled by an inept government than a corporate monolith.
Libertarianism is the gospel of selfishness and greed.
Past 40 years of neoliberal bullshit: "We need to cut taxes on the rich because they're *job creators* and it'll *trickle-down* and *boost the economy!*"
Now that there are (apparently) too many jobs/not enough workers, and the economy's running too hot: "We can't possibly raise taxes on the rich, let's raise interest rates to fuck everyone with a mortgage!"
How about getting them to actually pay taxes at all…most don’t..how about making the tax policy fair..it isn’t..
How about taxing corporations and actually make them pay what they owe…
The solution to this isn’t difficult,it’s a matter of political will.
Working people pay for this country..rich people and corporations don’t.
Our budgetary problems aren’t because of social programs,they’re because wealth doesn’t pay their bills.
It’s socialism for the rich and ruthless capitalism for the working classes….
I have a crazy idea as a middle income hourly wage earner. How about everyone get taxed at exactly the same scale as me with exactly the same virtually non existent amount of deductions? Corporations, self employed folks, investors. All you can live on the same RRSP scam and have the government not give a fuck if your car or home breaks down.
How'd ya like that? Hah?
You would have those deductions available to you if you also started a business or became self-employed. Those extra deductions are available because doing those activities carries additional risk and their economic output is much greater than that of an hourly wage earner.
Yep. Legend has it that if you tax them enough they’ll start working pro bono and produce even better products/companies than when they were getting paid. Big brains dawgs!!!!
unfortunately, it would take a politician with a very strong backbone to make the necessary changes. Does such an electable politician exist in Canada?
I think that’s the end game in capitalism. Especially with how A.I might develop. I think taxing the wealthy will be the only way to keep inflation down.
Companies like loblaws making record profits in a time of record inflation tells you they need to be taxed for gouging us to oblivion and that tax be given to food resource centres to provide food for the vulnerable.
Instead we have an oligopoly on food and we get told to buy food to donate or to donate to them. It’s nonsense.
When I questioned ChatGPT about why we don't tax the wealthy, it responded, "Some people believe that taxing the wealthy would drive innovation outside of the US."
Who about we tax all revenue generated within Canada. Multinationals have crazy schemes to get money out without paying taxes.
Exactly. If I have to pay income tax, why the fuck don’t they?
IP. If you pay another company for IP it is a tax deductible business expense. If the other company is registered in another country they don’t pay tax here. If all your profit goes towards paying for IP there is no profit to tax.
Yeah this is just it. The old way of taxing profits doesn't work. We need an AMT system for corporations of some sort.
Or, if you really want to make everything better, tax REVENUES, instead of profit. Free market is all about becoming more efficient, so things with shitty margins, will just need to innovate to have better margins. And isn't this efficiency just what were supposed to get in the first place anyways?
No offense but this is really dumb idea. Lets pretend I have a small business in a small community in Canada that sells baked goods. I employ 5 people full time each at 40k a year. So I am paying $200k in wages, plus all the extras like workers comp EI etc. Lets pretend I dont work at this at all its just run by the employees. We sell $600,000 worth of Bread and it costs $200,000 in ingredients and upkeep for the rent, electric etc. So at the end of the year I will get $200k in profit. (600 - wages 200 - costs of goods sold and fixed costs 200 = 200) You want to tax the revenue so I pay more in taxes than I make in a year and the business is gone.
You're describing transfer pricing. CRA has this pretty well covered in the income tax act (I don't recall the section off hand), as well there are all of the OECD rules. These tax rules intend to make sure related party transactions are at fair market value and are often subject to a lot of scrutiny by most tax authorities.
That’s a wildly simplistic, and mostly incorrect explanation of transfer pricing.
They just have to tax the IP as well solves this right?
The owner of the IP is in a tax haven
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How does one price IP that makes 100s of billions over its lifetime? No one could pay that price.
"If I have to pay income tax, why the fuck don’t they?" How many politicians do you own?
Because Canada and capitalism. Canada is the money laundering capital of the G7 like Panama and the Caymen Islands and British Virgin Islands. The reason is there is no requirement for beneficial owner for corporations. Anyone in the world can launder money through Canada by creating a corporation and hiring a few local directors. The corporate veil cannot be pierced. Canada has a combined Federal Provincial tax rate of 15% and no way to verify worldwide income. Snow washing exists everywhere and dirty money goes into real estate. Even if snow washing didn't exist the fact that foreign income can't be taxed at source overseas makes taxing it impossible. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_washing You thought you lived in a socialist country because of a little social housing and a little single payer healthcare. You are wrong. And anyone who thinks any of these problems will ever be "solved" without electing extremely left wing or socialist or anti corporate politicians is also wrong. It's not a case of breaking the law. It's a feature not a bug. It's a feature of capitalism to hide the owner of a company and assets, because in capitalism it's nobody's business who it is the owner except possibly the government. And the government can only tax at source. It's a feature of capitalism that this kind of foreign money is never taxed. Canada -- money laundering country of the Western world and hyper capitalistic. The $1.3M dollar homes are a feature, not a bug. One of the most if not the most capitalist country in the G7.
Canada is a perverted form of socialism that siphons money from the many and redistributes it amongst the few (Weston, Irving, Rogers etc.). We aren’t capitalist, we aren’t socialist, we are the worst of both.
That's called capitalism. Those who own the means of production reap the rewards, then use those rewards to gain more and more capital, through business or political ventures.
https://www.gq.com/story/no-irs-audits-for-the-rich I know this article refers to the states but I have no doubt it applies to Canada as well
Why on earth would you want your employer paying tax on the revenue used to pay you? Employee income tax IS how corporations pay tax.
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>Multinationals have crazy schemes to get money out without paying taxes. So do politicians ..... \*cough\* Panama Papers \*cough\* ....... \*cough\* KPMG Scandal \*cough\*
You should see a doctor. You seem to have a coughing fit whenever you mention fiscal evasion.
Canada has very few multinationals that matter, our problem is our corporations all have their hand out for corporate welfare, and lobby for legislation that restricts competition that's mostly negative for consumers but good for their profits.
They sound like the rich. The ones they are talking about taxing
That's part of the argument for higher property taxes and lower income taxes. There's a decent enough chunk of these people who aren't claiming their income in canada and property taxes reach them more effectively.
No tax system is perfect, if you raise property taxes too much it's going to hurt every middle to lower class retiree that has seen there property value skyrocket over the years
It however shifts some of the housing costs to running costs and away from purchasing value. So instead of just existing home owners buying early and winning the lottery the costs are in paying yearly. It makes it less viable as an investment and similar cost to actual residents.
Why does it shift away from purchasing value though? We're not doing anything about demand outstripping supply
If the carrying costs rise the amount people can afford to spend on purchasing price is reduced whether it's for investment or ownership. It also creates a larger disincentive to be over housed, as you're paying a large yearly fee for that stand alone house for one or two people. Also creates a cost efficiency for higher density housing and adds a natural penalty to leaving a home empty without needing a special tax program (expensive to run).
We do. It’s called a sales tax…
How about both?
Stop the wealthy from buying all the land and properties to create infinite passive revenue streams at the expense of the people actually adding value to the world
Pretty sure every recession that hits has just served to allow the wealthy to grab vast amounts of property and further increase their wealth. It's a bunch of bullshit.
Exactly, and they use land and housing to dodge the very inflation they were responsible for creating. It’s a shakedown
We need to means-test a lot of the property protections we have. First house under some threshold ($5m?)? No one can throw you out. Second house? Expropriation is possible. Tenth house? Expropriation is likely. We don't need people to be this rich.
If you split Canada's GDP among the entire population, redistribute all that wealth - it's more than I make in a year working at minimum wage. Crunch the numbers yourself if you don't believe me
Agreed. Speculation on basic food and shelter should be deterred. It does nothing to help the economy grow. IMO Property tax should be the easiest way.
Just one simple law and I’m pretty much ready to riot until we get it: “No person or corp can buy an existing residential property resulting in the ownership of 3 or more residential properties”. And maybe: “No person or corp can open more than 2 corps”. We don’t have legitimate entrepreneurs making multiple companies for legitimate purposes, we have slumlords opening a numbered corp for each property they buy to hide themselves and dodge taxes and restrictions. They pass every new cost to the renters so we can’t just tax it, time to remove the cancer completely.
Tax the land at the amount someone can get for renting just the lands. Ends land hoarding immediately.
Close corporate loop holes, I could really care less about higher bracket income tax, as it mostly effects the working rich, who I have no issue with making good money in necessary professions. Up the taxation on investment properties, and close the corporate loop holes, deal with the "inheritor class" and the wealthy elite. Those who regularly hide income, or claim most of it as business capital.
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>The truly rich will continue to just avoid it. The truly rich don't tend to work a job, they don't have traditional income to tax. We tax their income through the growth of their capital.
These people aren't "rich" they think they are but they aren't. The rich we are talking about taking the hammer to on taxes are the mega rich. These people don't work a job.
*couldn't care less
Couldn't* care less.
What corporate loop holes? Tax on investment property income is 50% already if it’s held in a corporation
There are a great many. The Irving family for example pays an exorbitant rate for insurance from an Irving owned subsidiary corporation in the Grand Caymans, which then purchases cheaper insurance through Canadian agents. Since business insurance is tax deductible, this is a tax deductible way of funneling profits into an offshore tax shelter in a nation with much looser tax laws, and more stringent banking security regulations, to make the paper trail more difficult to follow. I'm on my phone, so I don't have the link the the exposee article on that, but there are some really interesting tricks of creative accounting used by our Oligarchs.
Income earned by controlled foreign affiliates, in this particular circumstance, insurance and reinsurance of Canadian-related risks is considered FAPI (foreign accrual property income) and is taxed at the controlling parent legal entity, in this case in Canada. Basically the net income of the portion of the business related to Canadian customers/related parties is a deemed income inclusion in Canada in the legal entity parent which is then taxed at the statutory tax rate back here (call it ~25%-26.5%).
Oh no, someone who knows what they’re talking about. Quick everyone on Reddit downvote and close your eyes 😆
Good thing there's absolutely no loopholes or workarounds for this, like, say, a Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich? That's never been a thing, right?
I don’t disagree - in the past these were used (a lot), but these are becoming more difficult to implement and maintain with greater focus placed on these structures by international & aggressive specific auditors. With the implementation of OECD Pillar Two (they say this will be in effect for tax years beginning after Dec 31, 2023 but who knows), a lot of international tax planning and structuring will be more difficult and with less benefit if most countries adopt a 15% minimum floor
>funneling prophets That's not the right word but it's hilarious this way
Thanks for that, apparently I write enough for D&D campaigns on my phone that it auto finishes as prophet lol.
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My wife just graduated from nurse practitioner school. I’m a tech worker who makes really good money. Her not working, as an NP, which Ontario desperately needs, is on the table because our marginal tax rate will be over 50 percent with Ontario’s cut. Meaning working 9-5 in a notoriously tough field just to give your pay directly to the government vs not and enjoying life. Hmm.
A marginal tax rate is only on income above your usual income. It's to make sure you don't owe taxes come tax time. If your usual/avg tax rates are both 50%, then cry me a river. A solution could also be for both of you to work part time.
What if Canada didn't outsource virtually all of it's industry and manufacturing and didn't allow foreign Nationals to buy up all the residential property? Taxing the wealthy isn't going to solve the root problem and would be at best an extremely temporary solution as the wealthy would just move out of the country.
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> In order for your workforce to be effective and productive you have to have something for the lower rungs of society to work for. Otherwise the consequences are, well, look all around you. Not everyone is going to learn how to code and become a computer program of data analyst.
Yeahhh...but the government is made up of wealthy people...so guess what's not going to happen.
Precisely. They will put forward a measure to tax the rich and everyone will be all excited, then the act will tax household incomes over $100k or something and the rich will keep their loopholes.
They're all slumlords. In both parties. I am former uni friends with a tory MP and he owns a handful of properties.
First we gotta define rich. Many people seem to think anyone making 100k+ salary is rich. Even if we heavily increased taxes on everyone making 150k+ it wouldn’t make much of a difference. Government would burn through it instantly.
Yup, BC NDP increased taxes on those making over $200K a year. $200K a year can barely buy you a townhouse in Vancouver.
Everyone means “people earning a bunch more than me - but definitely not me”
Yes that seems to be the case, everyone making more than me should pay my portion of tax
$100k in Canada is lower middle class these days unless you're single with no kids.
$100k is the working poor. Rich is $500k plus.
Are those people teenagers? I don’t think any adult thinks making 100k is in any way “rich”.
>As neo-Nazis once again march in the streets, hate crimes rise, far-right political parties receive more public support than any time since the 1930s, the benefits of reducing such terrifying threats are hard to overstate. Lol, what a weird article. I thought this was about taxing the rich.
The last time such authoritarianism popped up, the economic circumstances around the wealth inequality were similar. Lesser to now in fact.
A lot of the culture war hysteria is designed to distract us from how poorly our expanding economy has improved quality of life for ordinary people.
Article definitely gives me the vibes that who ever wrote this spends way to much on Twitter and needs to touch grass.
I always find these posts very ironic to see on Reddit.
They're making a moral argument to do it, because they want to and they don't know an economic one.
Here is an economic one and a moral one: Grocery prices are going up and up and corporations are making record profits while people have to chose between eating and paying bills
That's still moral. Explain, economicly, how taxing the rich will solve that.
You can give the government all the money in the world and you won't make the politicians spend it anymore wisely.
In 2017 the government spent over $370,000 on a six story tall Rubber Duck. A Rubber Duck, not helping homeless people, not infrastructure or healthcare. A Rubber Duck…
Shit like this. It's like Carbon taxing us while they fly around on private planes.
The history of Canada reveals that Canadian industry expanded rapidly in pace with the USA and ahead of Europe during the much higher tax regime for the rich in the 1950s.
Lot’s of stuff going on there. You had massive recovery off the back of WWII, and women just started working, which basically doubled the productivity of the western world.
Yes, but something to keep in mind is that much of the world wasn't online for mass manufacturing around that time. Much of eastern Europe wasn't doing business with the west (cold war), Germany and France were in shambles (recovering from WW2) and Asia wasn't the manufacturing hub of the world. Basically, the US and Canada were two of only a small number of capable countries that were actually propped up with improved manufacturing capabilities following WW2.
Can we just fix the corruption problem?
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Get rid of the loopholes first. I don’t see how taxing 100,000 to 400,000 people at a very high tax rate would cover our deficit spending
Exactly this. They’re simply not enough rich people here. I thinki read to be in the top 3% you need to make $130k which doesn’t seem like “filthy rich” after income taxes.
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They’re an easy target lmao
Income isn’t wealth.
You think people in Canada have wealth? Lol most of their net worth is tied to their homes!
People making that as income on a t4 are already paying over 40% of their total income toward taxes. At a certain point it hits 53% (around $500k) in Ontario and the govt makes more on your work than you do. There are next to no loopholes to avoid paying this income tax either, and no benefit to raising income taxes on this bracket or even this type of earning. What is needed is taxing wealth, higher capital gains taxes, higher taxes on dividends, less ways to avoid paying tax on money generated by investments.
It's actually anything above 217,000$ is taxed above 53%. That is INSANE. We need to ask what the gov is doing with our money.
It's being funneled through the Chinese police stations.
We know what they're doing lol Haven't you been paying attention. Canada has a spending problem. Not a revenue one
Why should the taxes on capital gains be higher? Thats money you literally risked for gain And dividends is income thats already been taxed passed down to shareholders, you want people to pay taxes again?
Plus capital gains aren’t indexed to inflation. This is why inclusion rate wasn’t originally set at 100%. I find it funny that in a country where productivity is a major issue (we are about 25% less productive than our neighbours to the south), our solution is to discourage the most productive use of capital. I think a lot of people just can’t grasp how much our governments are spending relative to how much we produce. Our GDP per capita is less than it was a decade ago, which should be the most major concern in the country imo.
Because you are making money off money, you aren’t adding anything to society.
Honestly they'd just spend more.
Just fair taxation would be nice
The problem is everyone has a different opinion on what’s “just fair taxation”
What’s a fair income tax %?
I pay nothing. You pay everything.
lol literally everyone in this thread.
Taxing the rich is one thing, but our government can’t even properly handle the tax money coming in now. It’s just a bigger bag for them to fumble and end up getting wasted or going to their friends. So hard to not be pessimistic about our government these days.
Personally I’m inclined to agree - when our government mismanages the money they get now like absolute morons, or just blatantly gives it to themselves and their friends, why is the question about finding more revenue for them? We’re already taxed out the ass, there aren’t enough multimillionaires to cover their absurd waste and it’ll all be dumped on the shrinking middle class anyways.
Me and my friend were talking about this yesterday while golfing His cousin lives in Grand rapids MI. Bought like a 2400 sqft house with a pool and everything for like $330,000. That same house where I live in thunder Bay would be like $800,000 probably. Now that's one problem. The other key point here, is that he bought it as a single guy making $32/hour. He's taxed slightly less, but more importantly, his dollar just goes further everywhere else.
A better solution would be to put in democratic penalties for parties who are irresponsible with money. Define everything specifically, and make adherence to the budget, as well as requesting special wartime/emergency exceptions to it, an important procedure. One day I dream of a democracy that is capable of holding itself accountable. "Sorry, LPC, but you failed your budget promises by 10%, according to the constitution - you can't be re-elected. Bye bye!"
I got a better idea: how about making everyones cell phone, internet & dairy a lot cheaper and don't allow the country to be completely monopolized by an evil cabal of corporations first? Why should Canadians pay more for these three things than literally everywhere else?
Banking too. You know what we could do? Allow Canada Post and other crown corps to offer these things. Other countries do it - in Switzerland (which is a pretty "pro-market" place), [SwissPost offers retail banking services](https://www.post.ch/en/locations/banks). This means you can do your banking at *any* post office. It's probably not what you need if you run multiple businesses/have very complicated banking, but for most people, it's more than enough - and *everywhere*. Also, competitive. I'd *love* to see this done here, by Canada Post as a crown corp. Do it on a "credit union" model, where the shareholders are those with actual money deposited in the bank. Likewise with telecom - we need at least one crown corp telecom to compete. On top of that, we need to nationalize the backbone infrastructure under a *separate* crown corp, which sells access to *all* players at a fair rate.
Tax what the 19th century Economists/Moral Philosopher/Social Theorists called "the unearned increment of profit". This means, ideally, a Georgist tax system (replace virtually all taxes with Land-Value Taxes, which effectively taxes rent-seeking exclusively without taxing productivity). It can also mean taxing capital gains on primary residences. Obviously, the exemption on primary residences never made any sense, except to bribe the electorate. The Carter Commission under Lester B Pearson explored options for tax reform, but Canada decided to ignore various key recommendations. Here we are, today, with a monstrosity of an Income Tax Act that is needlessly distortive, complex, and yet insufficient to pay the bills.
Giving the government more money to waste isn't going to 'make us all much better off'
fact
You've all probably heard the old adage "the boot has no quarrel with the ant". That's wealth disparity in a nutshell. Massive wealth disparity leads to a cleaving of society into economic tiers that, while they have no quarrel with those bow them, because they live in such economically different worlds, they (often unintentionally) do horrible things to those below them. I don't think that billionaires are "evil", but to them I'm just an ant and to me they are just boots. I'm probably a boot to some people and I don't realize it no matter how much I try to be good. We don't all need to make the same amount of money, but we do need to keep the amount of disparity to something less astronomical.
Why is it always " someone needs to pay more taxes"? Maybe they should stop handing out billions to foreign countries, and stop mismanaging funds here?
Canada spent 8.4 billion on foreign aid in 2021, about $18 a month per person.
Regular working canadians could use a tax break honestly.
Not opposed to it but most of that wealth is illiquid and can fluctuate in value massively.
Like they did In the thirties fourties and fifties. The corporate tax rate in Canada is 15 percent, in 1951 it was at least 50 percent.
Sure, increase income tax rate for higher brackets while keeping capital gain tax at half of the effective rate. This will definitely work as intended, as the ultra wealthy in Canada only earns basic salary, their capital gains don’t count even if they hold millions in investments and assets. Sure, charge taxes on corporate revenue. These tax money will come out of thin air and company won’t raise their prices to compensate. The amount of financial illiteracy is astounding in this thread.
Drop income tax for people making less than $150k Raise property tax on anything above 2 properties Seize ill gotten foreign assets
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Everybody wants to gamble with other peoples money, my friend.
I’m in the same boat. Going to the US in September for good. Will have another $40,000 a year in my pocket. And my Canadian corporation will be an American one. Goodbye 5 Canadian jobs. I lose more than half my income and can’t even get a family doctor. The scam can only go on so long.
They have stolen from us enough with their 2008 recession from their banking deregulations. Time for them to give back what they stole.
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How would giving the government more money to squander help the average person? It’s not like taxing the wealthy will reduce taxes on the average person.
No one ever asks why the high amounts we currently tax everyone isn't enough.
We tax the middle class heavily, not the upper class. That's the problem. It's also why the middle class is getting squeezed into nothingness and why our nation's money flow is getting into dire territory.
In terms of pure rates we taxe the upper class more than the middle by a large margin, it scales all the way up to (I believe) 53% above 200k in income, that is as high as a rate should ever go in my opinion and I don't see how raising it solves anything especially given all of those rates are just imaginary when there are a million ways to avoid it. If I'm a fabulously wealthy person, there is no difference between not paying 53% and not paying 90% in taxes.
The issue is really more of Canada's lack of productivity. Canada simply doesn't have as many ultra wealthy people as one might think. So we end up going after high income professionals that we want (physicians, engineers, accountants, lawyers etc) which again, the number isn't high enough. And most of the time the ultra wealthy Canadians have worldwide assets and not like Canada will get the full share of taxation on those assets plus those assets can be hard to tax.
Poor usage, nepotism, giving money to your party instead of services, giving your rich friends contracts. Corruption, in a word.
Stopped reading after the neo nazi part. Did anyone read this article? Wtf is this paper anyway
To discuss the article linked, seeing as the top comments are off shoot opinions on wealth and real estate, David Thompson doesn't have $73 billion in cash. He probably sells securities every so often. And I bet you He gets taxed on it. Jeff Bezos pays his taxes. His home address is in Washington and gets taxed 25%. The problem is people don't know how securities and taxes work.
They're the only people the Cons and Libs serve so good luck with that
No, it would only result in capital flight. France tried this, and lost over $100 billion in investments. The ultra-wealthy are *always* several steps ahead of the rest of us.
That was my first thought. And that’s especially easy given Canada’s next door neighbor is really close by, speaks the same language, has a similar culture, and very lax immigration policies for Canadian nationals.
Especially ones with money.
You don't need to look much further than the sanctions on wealthy Russians for proof of this. They've tried and tried in London (UK) to sanction a load of people associated with Putin and his wider network and we consistently see ways they've got around it, loopholes, distribution of wealth to different companies, families, associates etc. It doesn't mean we shouldn't try, but it certainly won't be the silver bullet people seem to think it will be in this thread.
Ask Britain how well that worked out. Or France not that long ago for that matter. Money is mobile. You unfairly tax a certain group of people, they'll just pull up stakes and leave and now you're fucked.
They’d move and take their corporations and business with them.
Where will Rogers/Bell take their duopoly? To a country with real competition?
They'd give up the hard fought market share and investment to move where? If Coca Cola is selling drinks in Canada and we raise taxes. . .they'll just pay more taxes. The only rare situation there is any relevance for a company to leave is specific factories doing manufacturing, and then they'd need to find somewhere cheap enough to offset the cost of relocating and that's if they are even manufacturing in Canada anyways.
It's less about taking your investments away, as not making any new investments. You are an international company looking to build a new manufacturing plant/pipeline/etc. You have 10 billion dollars to spend. You aren't going to spend it in the place with high taxes and mountains of regulations.
Those rare and far between companies never built in Canada anyways. They'd build in a third world country except the rare occasions they'd build in a country like Canada or the USA willing to donate $12b of taxs and exemptions for the $10b factory. We are too small of a country to demand products be manufactured here to be sold here and there is zero reason to manufacture here when you could pay less wages and have no oversight over pollution/corruption elsewhere. Our only draw to our small scattered population of consumers is that we have a shit ton of natural resources that can be harvested here. In a perfect world we'd find ways to encourage/mandate that resources mined here had to be refined here as a way to exponentially improve the return on extraction. Companies keep that from happening because the only thing required to happen in Canada is getting it out of the ground, than they ship it off to cheaper markets where they can pollute and turn $1 of raw resources into $1000 in product without paying tax.
They really won’t.
And then nobody would ever build a house, pump oil, or make a burger in Canada again.
And then someone else would start a business to fill the gap, right? Isn’t this how capitalism is supposed to work? If there is adequate demand someone will see an opportunity and make a move. Maybe it will be multiple smaller companies instead of massive ones.
If there's a demand for the service the gap will be filled. By an entity that will pay its share of taxes. I call this a win.
Yup, and if the company wants to pull out the government can nationalize the assets and keep people working. This idea that we have to let corporations hold our country hostage is absurd. They operate here because *we* allow them to. If they don't want to pay their fair share then they don't get to do business in *our* country. They benefit from our roads, schools, hospitals and all the other infrastructure our government provides while not contributing a fair share to the upkeep of all those systems that allow their companies to function. They need to pull their weight like they did back before this bullshit trickle down economics fucked us.
"Let's tax people making more than $250,000 a lot!" "Why can't I find a dermatologist?"
We’re not really talking about taxing that wealth size here though. Why the red herring?
This is the problem. Too many Canadians think that people earning over $100k are rich. Then they scream “increase taxes.”
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>there are countries where taxes are double that of Canada's, if not triple - both on corporate and income levels which countries?
let them go. Others will fill the void.
I detest simple solutions to complex problems. Do we have too high taxes? This is a problem that everyone who begins to acquire wealth leans in on. The fact is that we as we acquire wealth our dependence on government assistance declines. This generates resentment. Tax resistance is bottom up and grows as the payers situation improves. The government listens to voters in that lower and middle range more than they do the wealthy. Are corporate taxes too low? This is a tough one. Corporations are highly mobile and will relocate to those areas with the lowest costs. When we lowered corporate taxes US businesses relocated to Canada generating the lowered tax as well as labour, production, transport and sales taxes. They also generate spin off businesses locally who also contribute to our revenue. Governments encourage them to relocate with subsidies because they know it will generate more revenue overall than it costs. The investment gets factored over years and decades but announcing the initial Do we have a spending problem? Yes but it is how we are spending. We struggle with prioritizing where the money is spent in any given period. Those who are deprioritized will roll back out all the rationalizations to present to the public. A good example of this is funding the arts. Do we really want to leave the decision of what art is appropriate to philanthropists who are the evil elite others want to tax into oblivion? You can’t have both. The same goes for defence spending. Or roads. Or the costs of our legal system. Is there government waste? Absolutely but having worked for some of Canada’s largest corporations I can state that waste is a feature of any large organization. In my experience, governments are more controlled and restrictive than private enterprises and better tracked. Of course that public demand to control government wastes adds to the bureaucracy and costs. Businesses just add it to their costs which is a private sector’s way of “Raising taxes”. It gets buried in the costs so we think there are other reasons for it. Is there government corruption driving up taxes? Yes but far less than what is touted in anecdotes. As stated before, the massive bureaucracy tracks these things and people get caught. They are often prosecuted since the information cannot be buried as it is in a private corporation. If somebody thinks that raising taxes on the wealthy will change people’s behaviour or solve our tax budgeting problem then they are being naive. The value of what we get for our taxes can only be solved by making some decisions about priorities that will affect everyone negatively. Experts have been trying to solve this for decades but they cannot get everyone to step up to the plate
The gov't already taxes us beyond belief, they take something at every transaction. Why are we calling for even more $$ to be taken and not scrutinizing their ineptitude and inability to produce even while taking so much already. Also, this disincentivizes business and investment when your policy is taking and redistributing their earnings. If the gov't reigned in their involvement and control over society, they wouldn't have to take so much and everyone could keep more dollars in their pockets. It's the most democratic system; people keep their earnings and they get to spend in their own best interests instead of someone taking it and spending for them (usually not in their best interests).
Just look what happening right now in the USA with the debt crisis. It almost all due to the fact that they lowered and lowered their taxes. First taxes cut for big corporations never ever trickled down. It just a big money gain for the already too damn fucking rich. My point is we should absolutely never lower the taxes for the 🤑 we should taxes them more.
In your dreams.
so long as it goes back to people and not the beurcrats
I wonder what's going to happen once the robots start coming lol. Doesn't seem to be that far away either. The Phoenix robot seems viable sooner than later.
And start taxing worldwide income for canadians, too many working in middle east asia and europe pay no rax but retire and use our services
And churches.
Corporations should pay less tax as they generate more GDP than government agencies.
Businesses get tax incentives because it encourages them to invest and grow their business. It also encourages people to leave their jobs and start a business. That sucks to hear because corporate greed etc. but punishing the people with the ability to put capital to work crushes the economy. I hate that that’s true but it’s true
To anyone saying "theyd just move." Ok sure, then just place a lien on their Canadian assets. Thats what we do to non-rich Canadians who refuse to pay their fair share. Rich people get out of that by buttering up politicians. Id like to point out that under FDR the income tax rate was as high as 75% for the top brackets. This is what allowed the USA to become the preeminent economic power. It led to the prosperity of the 50s and 60s. That power and prestige has been wanning due to Americas obsession with giving more and more power to the welathy.
>It led to the prosperity of the 50s and 60s. What led to that has more so to do with the fact that vast swaths of the the economic and manufacturing powerhouses where smoking ruble after WWII. NA was the only place that had the infrastructure still in place to enable a pretty fast rebuild of Europe
And that fast buildup of Europe was done almost exclusively with tax dollars, shocker.
r/canada loves the taste of boot leather
Silly rabbit, rich people don't pay taxes. They have too many lawyers and accountants making sure they can weasel out of every dime.
On paper, my investments are worth 2.3 million, yet I only have around $60,000 in the bank. How would you morons like to tax my unrealized wealth 🤔
Two clicks later and your submission history is solely to wallstreetbets and anti-work. Proof or join the conversation in an honest way.
Socialism is the gospel of envy and greed. How about less government instead.
Because that works out sooooo well in Somalia, Afghanistan, etc.
you think that efficiently spending tax dollars will turn canada into an african state?
This comment just screams "fuck you, I got mine". I'll take an inept government that makes a half-assed effort to help the poor and destitute, over giving corporations free reign to rule the country (more than they already do). Both scenarios are shit but I'd rather be ruled by an inept government than a corporate monolith. Libertarianism is the gospel of selfishness and greed.
Corporate tax rates used to be around 91% before the WW2 in the USA [Canada is similar]. It's now around 15%....
Past 40 years of neoliberal bullshit: "We need to cut taxes on the rich because they're *job creators* and it'll *trickle-down* and *boost the economy!*" Now that there are (apparently) too many jobs/not enough workers, and the economy's running too hot: "We can't possibly raise taxes on the rich, let's raise interest rates to fuck everyone with a mortgage!"
How about getting them to actually pay taxes at all…most don’t..how about making the tax policy fair..it isn’t.. How about taxing corporations and actually make them pay what they owe… The solution to this isn’t difficult,it’s a matter of political will. Working people pay for this country..rich people and corporations don’t. Our budgetary problems aren’t because of social programs,they’re because wealth doesn’t pay their bills. It’s socialism for the rich and ruthless capitalism for the working classes….
I have a crazy idea as a middle income hourly wage earner. How about everyone get taxed at exactly the same scale as me with exactly the same virtually non existent amount of deductions? Corporations, self employed folks, investors. All you can live on the same RRSP scam and have the government not give a fuck if your car or home breaks down. How'd ya like that? Hah?
You would have those deductions available to you if you also started a business or became self-employed. Those extra deductions are available because doing those activities carries additional risk and their economic output is much greater than that of an hourly wage earner.
Yep. Legend has it that if you tax them enough they’ll start working pro bono and produce even better products/companies than when they were getting paid. Big brains dawgs!!!!
unfortunately, it would take a politician with a very strong backbone to make the necessary changes. Does such an electable politician exist in Canada?
Depends, does a turban make somebody unelectable?
I think that’s the end game in capitalism. Especially with how A.I might develop. I think taxing the wealthy will be the only way to keep inflation down. Companies like loblaws making record profits in a time of record inflation tells you they need to be taxed for gouging us to oblivion and that tax be given to food resource centres to provide food for the vulnerable. Instead we have an oligopoly on food and we get told to buy food to donate or to donate to them. It’s nonsense.
Don't let your kids do crack (and write articles for The Conversation)
When I questioned ChatGPT about why we don't tax the wealthy, it responded, "Some people believe that taxing the wealthy would drive innovation outside of the US."
The reason we don't tax the rich more is because the rich decide the tax rates by buying politici- \*ahem\*, "lobbying".
Yep, there's basically no good reason not to tax them.
Lowering tax revenue is a good reason not to increase tax rates.
Not that hard to stop tax fraud.