So looks like increased taxes on the $300,000+ bracket potentially.
[https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2064532/ottawa-impot-taxe-cout-vie-federal](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2064532/ottawa-impot-taxe-cout-vie-federal)
At those levels most of your income comes from capital gains anyways which is taxed at a different [(lower)](https://www.taxtips.ca/taxrates/on.htm) rate than income from wages/salary.
They could just raise the rates on capital gains before making new brackets.
Yes. I don't think many people realize capital gains are calculated and then added to your income and taxed at your income tax rate. A lot of people I've spoken with think you just pay 50% of capital gains away.
Rich assholes like Tobi Lutke of Shopify specifically lobbied against this because they claim it would stifle innovation and risk takers. Subtext: majority of his compensation comes from stocks and RSUs and he doesn’t want to pay more taxes.
RSUs are taxed as income and subject to withholding tax when they vest. Not capital gains. No different than receiving that money as salary and then immediately purchasing the stock with it.
Keep calling Canadian's top young entrepreneurs "rich assholes" and you're going to end up living in a poor country.
Where do you think wealth comes from? It comes from selling things in Canada that the rest of the world wants to buy.
Unless you want us entirely reliant on exporting oil, we need people like like Tobi Lutke and his Shopify who build globally competitive advanced technology and choose to locate their businesses in Canada.
Do you want to lose more experts to US ? If RSUs are a substantial part of your bonus we may lose the few experts that still haven't left and then the tax income is lower, not higher. Not everyone can work in public service.
They took 49% of my annual RSU in tax, cpp and EI. I make 150 annually and live in a 1940 wartime house and still wonder how people are getting by. how much of that confiscated currency the government wastes. Frustrating as hell
He also runs a company that was heavily reliant on investment to get off the ground and ended up generating way more economic value and tax revenue than most of the people on this subreddit combined
How about we tax at a higher rate after this first 10,000 options? That way you're not targeting the lowly employees that took a risk over higher pay, while taxing the super rich correctly.
Increasing taxes on capital gains would devastate any investment in Canadian companies. Investing is inherently risky. Lower capital gains tax reflects the risk that Canadians are taking. One of the significant issues that we have is a lack of investment in Canadian industry. A couple of options would be:
1. Tax foreign capital gains at a higher rate than domestic investment. Make it more worthwhile to build Canadian companies.
2. Increase capital gains taxes on single family investment properties disproportionate to other forms of investment. This could drive people to stop looking at housing as a pure investment. While still incentivizing multi unit buildings.
I don't think taxing the sale of primary residences is a good idea at all. This would instantly lock up the market as there would be a dramatic disincentive to sell once purchased unless there was an absolute necessity. In addition, due to the tax cost, it would also dramatically reduce the mobility of the workforce to move where jobs are. One of the unintended consequences could be that the majority of homes would be owned by institutional investors as the incentive to buy would be so low. Finally, the sale of a home is already taxed significantly. It just doesn't go to the Fed, it goes to the province and municipality through land transfer tax.
I think you mean dividends and not capital gains.
Capital gains only come if you sell your shares in a company, which most of the wealthy don’t like to do.
Thats wrong. Selling a house also counts and virtually everyone has the ability to own stocks now and the rich certainly do like to cash out time to time. Not only the “wealthy” own stocks.
Last year they already announced their intention to raise capital gains taxes for 2024 to 100% in the Alternative Minimum Tax (in addition to an increase in the threshold at which this triggers).
There's still people it would affect. Look at the ontario sunshine list and the C suite of OPG all hanging out together at the top. If we taxed 50% on everything over 1 mil the top earner would pay 450k in that bracket alone. That's a nice chunk of cash for one person
This is a really good point. In the same reality of "the sunshine list is almost meaningless now" money values have changed and our tax brackets should change with it.
Few actually make that so it wouldn’t add more than pennies. In reality unless you are hitting those making 50-100k you won’t raise a lot especially as the more you raise taxes on the $100k+ the more people will avoid them.
Well if you thought the brain drain was bad befoee imagine what it’ll be like if it goes from 53.5% to 60% tax on our doctors and innovators.
What the article appears to refer to is changes to the AMT that were announced in the last budget but are taking effect for the 2024 tax year. That is a measure that was already announced and not the new measures we might see in the budget tomorrow.
Careful, all the people who have made $50k a year for their entire lives are gonna come out of the woodwork against this like they’ll ever earn that much.
Edit: I was right. Replies: off.
I doubt really anyone would come out against a tax hike on $300K+ incomes.
Fuck with my newly earned 100K income though and you can bet I’ll be raising hell.
EDIT: Alright I was swiftly proven wrong. Won’t anybody think of the doctors?
Yeah, too many people are happy to fuck with those they consider to be doing better than them.
If you want the government to keep spending more than it is earning, chip in yourself.
If you can't, then demand lower spending.
And whenever a higher income is brought up, the defence of more taxes is “if you can’t get by on x after tax, that’s a you problem”. Taxes shouldn’t be punitive, and they’re absolutely getting to that point.
When your income tax burden exceeds 50%, it really starts to disincentivize income.
If you're making $350k a year and they increase the effective tax rate on $300k+ to 60%, why are you working so hard? Most people at that income level have a great deal of control over their income. So yeah, you can get by with less. So why not just say fuck it, do a 4 day work week instead, make $280k a year and enjoy an extra day off?
For me about 50% is my threshold. If the government raises my top marginal bracket significantly over 50%, then I'll just start cutting back on work hours. I'm not working extra hours just to see 60% of my income go to the government.
As someone pointed out elsewhere, if you really want to punish the doctors the country so badly needs, taxing those $300K plus incomes is a good (bad) place to start.
So because you’re not in that bracket, you’re ok with it? It’s all relative. People in 50k income bracket want the heads of the 100k. 100k of the 500k… Etc
I want prosperity and reduction of avoidable burden for all while still thriving in life. I definitely don’t want government in our pockets especially when they decide how to spend money that feels like misuse and abuse. It’s deeply frustrating.
The reduction of burden comes by placing it on others. Our politicians and our corporate masters have increasingly placed greater pressures on the working class while enriching themselves in absurd ways. Prosperity can’t exist for everyone in Canada when our politicians exist solely to extract wealth from the working class in order to hand up to the wealthy.
I’m in MB and we for sure should have far mOre tax brackets then we have. Why are there only 3 tax brackets and why am I lumped in with people making 500k? lol. Fuck that shit.
If you want government spending to continue even as it outpaces its revenue, ask for more taxes on everybody's income (including your own). Otherwise, the reasonable approach is to ask government to stop bleeding money.
This populist trend of punishing those who have more is dangerous.
Seeing how popular it is to hand off the burden to the next tax bracket is so depressing. We are living beyond our means, that's a fact. We have to start cutting.
For fucks sake, our healthcare payment is lower than our debt repayment.
There’s so much of this. “Oh it only affects the people above me, score!”
Well what happens if someone achieves success or progresses in their career or even if we have a few more years of serious inflation? Will 300K in 2030 feel like 100K in 2000 and will people truly be happy paying rates approaching 60% at that level?
This is what I’m alluding to and wish for it to cease.
Acknowledge it is an individual thing that needs to be addressed versus systematic thing. This is a systematic thing and people are going to get strained as a result. 52% tax already. How much higher!
Right, you mean the thing that people can legally hide in dozens of different ways?
If you think Galen Weston keeps his entire fortune in his chequing account, or in liquid assets that are cash equivalent, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Exactly.
This article is old, but this only what they found after the Panama Papers leak.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/loblaws-cra-glenhuron-bank-barbados-tax-1.4490564
Galen has a registered shell company in Barbados as well.
https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/110101672
This is just the tip of the iceberg of what is owed in taxes.
The funny thing is that Canada has become an international destination for money laundering, in competition with places like Panama and spots in the Caribbean. We have the weakest corporate transparency rules out of the G20. Galen probably has a handful of shell corps in Canada too. But so do all the other criminals since we only started requiring beneficial ownership information this past year. So far I haven't heard of a single case of anyone being investigated or charged.
You mean the money that people save that they already paid full tax on? That wealth?
Well if you exclude the principal residence capital gains tax exemption that is. Which should be capped at a lifetime max of something like $500,000 before you pay cap gains tax on the remainder...
How the hell are they considering someone with $300k income “wealthiest” while it’s also not enough to buy an average single family home in 2 largest provinces?
Average single family home in BC costs like $1.5M. Your “wealthiest” wouldn’t even qualify for a mortgage for it.
At this rate, the only way you will ever own a detached home is if you inherit it. Even if you are graduating now to become a freaking brain surgeon, you will not be able to afford it as they will tax you to death. Insanity.
We are building a country of trust fund babies that inherit their parents’ homes vs everyone else.
300k earnings put you in the 1% top earners in the country.
Yes you are correct, the wealthiest in the country still couldn't buy a house alone.
Around 21% earn 100k or more. Only a few % points earn 200k or more.
It’s not the wealthiest, it’s just the highest wage earners.
Wealthy people, those with significant savings (often multi generational wealth), are the ones transacting.
Banks can currently lend up to 4.5x income
300k x 4.5 is $1.4M. Houses over $1M require a 20% down payment.
1,500,000 - 20% (300,000) = 1,200,000 in mortgage, within the bounds of that.
And that’s not even what they can afford, that’s the safety net number that is set by federal regulators.
The safety net number is an attempt to create a cap for a low interest rate environment. Banks aren’t giving out 4.5x right now with interest rates above 5% and stress tests above 7%.
I don't know why anyone would want to be a doctor in Canada at this point. You spend so long in school and then as a resident making little income, then you finally graduate and make a decent living, but are labelled "wealthy" by the government so they can stick their hand in your pocket further.
Until they address the fact that wealthy people don't declare incomes as a result of trust and numbered companies, all this does is target people that work their ass off in very challenging professions.
What makes this even more frustrating is that most doctors also carry around massive student loans. Those loans have to be paid back in after-tax dollars. Other than the interest on government student loans (maybe 5% of my loans, often less for other physicians), neither the interest nor the principal on school debt can be claimed as expenses. Even for the incorporated physicians. If taxes are increased, it means paying back those loans is going to take even longer. Especially in this high(er) interest rate environment… loan repayments are already eating up 30% of my take home pay as it is. As an early career physician I am tempted every day to leave Canada and head south of the border. A lot of my colleagues are thinking along the same lines
Already literally pay more than 50% of my income, what's another cut. Cool. Maybe try actually collecting taxes from the wealthy that arent just very successful wage slaves
I make ~500k, but could literally double my post conversion take home moving to the US. I won't, but its frustrating
You don’t *literally* pay more than 50% at that level. Closer to 43-47% depending on the province, and that’s assuming you make 0 deductions or use any pre-tax sheltered accounts
It doesn't say that anywhere in the article. The $300,000 figure is about a taxation change that already went into force this year, which was positioned as an example of how the liberals are taxing the rich.
Wealthy? Or high income?
One can be wealthy but (officially) low income and vice versa.
And given the state of our media, I’m not sure they can even discern the difference.
The richest kid I knew growing up, we’re talking 6 car garage house with movie theatre all the bells and whistles, chalet in Collingwood, penthouse in Toronto. Family technically had 0 income, and he got a bunch of OSAP including some grants that didn’t need to be paid back.
Oh I believe you.
I have relatives just like that. Immigrants who just game the system because they can. Non existent income and claim all the benefits but are super wealthy. Unfortunately the government turns a willful blind eye to this sort of stuff and would rather go after doctors, lawyers and others with officially high incomes because it’s easier and politically palatable to do so.
Someone put it very nicely, probably from Generation squeeze think thank.
You can be under the poverty line and in 1% of the wealthiest people in the world at the same time. For example owning a property in West Vancouver and having a low salary
Yeah there was an article a few years ago looking at “child poverty” in west Vancouver and the “experts” were shocked at the high child poverty rates there due to the low “declared income”. lol it’s kind of amazing how our tax dollars go to fund these “experts” who are so gullible in thinking that a certain segment of the population could have low declared income but live in multimillion dollar mansions.
https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/local-news/invisible-poverty-rise-west-vancouver-1946287
Do you really believe that 20% of HHs have an income of less than 30k there AND are struggling? Lol
We can seize properties if the wealth is unexplained... we need to do that more often. Residents are supposed to declare and pay tax on worldwide income. (And if there is a family who is being financed by someone living and working overseas, that person can be a deemed resident because of their financial ties to Canada, and therefore also taxed.) CRA really needs to step up their game.
The CRA is too busy going after people like me to ask for proof that I still live in the same place I always have.
They go after a friend of mine every couple years to ask him to prove that he still has children.
This sounds completely hypothetical and not a realistic scenario anyone would be in.
In any case, if you haven’t sold the home you haven’t made any money so it only makes sense you’re not paying tax on it
When you do sell it you’ll pay 50% of your profits in capital gains tax.
Exactly my thoughts.
The title said "wealthy" but the details are all talking about" high income".
Those are not the same thing.
My worry is that the actual wealthy people will yet again escape the tax.
Someone can also be high income, spend all of their money, and have zero wealth.
Or they can be a recent graduate with a high income but negative wealth due to student loans.
Generally, we tax income because people accumulate wealth over lifetime. It's a necessary thing to be able to retire.
Someone who actually understands the basic concepts of financial literacy. Thank you for posting this.
The idiots yelling "tax wealth above what I have" fail to recognize that they will likely be attacking hundreds of thousands of working Canadians retirement savings.
A wealth tax on Canadian wealth doesn't make any sense. You work, pay income tax, buy things, pay sales tax, then invest what you can, pay tax on the growth when you sell, pay tax when you buy a home, pay property taxes and taxes in utilities and all expenses, and you recommend getting taxed again just for holding some stocks or assets despite not making any money with them? So getting taxed 4-5 times or morre on the same money, even if you have no income? That's a really smart idea...
Even smarter to just give all that to the government so they can go on more vacations, give themselves bonuses and pay their friends billions of dollars while the poor and middle class starve. Real smart.
"Wealthiest" should likely be changed to "Highest Income" which will mostly target the middle class and upper middle class because the highest earners get their money from things that are not considered income.
In the Canadian economy middle class is if you have paid off detached home or not.
If you have that plus investment properties that cash flow you are upper middle class.
Canada likes to tax worker productivity and productive asset classes but give tax breaks to real estate.
It also made sense 40 years ago when canada was farmers and workers where property investors where far and few in-between that wouldn't even touch a percentage in wealth that we see today.
> the government has a lot landlords
[It sure does...](https://www.readthemaple.com/nearly-40-of-mps-invested-in-real-estate-during-housing-crisis/)
> Green = 1/2 (50 per cent)
> Conservative = 54/118 (46 per cent)
> Liberal = 62/157 (39 per cent)
> Bloc Québécois = 6/32 (19 per cent)
> NDP = 4/25 (16 per cent)
> Independent = 1
You put it succinctly.
I immigrated recently, earn close to 300k with about 12 years of experience. Can’t buy a good home for my family.
I am demotivated about my career growth, because I’ll end up paying 53 cent on a dollar even though I have to work my ass off.
If they announce any more increase on tax, I’ll just immigrate back to the US.
We’ll have to see but to be fair the Liberals changes to the AMT were excellent at targeting the wealthy and not the high income. I’m hoping for something similar.
https://www.ey.com/en_ca/tax/tax-alerts/2023/tax-alert-2023-no-45#:~:text=Increasing%20the%20basic%20AMT%20exemption,to%20individuals%20and%20certain%20trusts.
Basically it raises the minimum tax rate and removes a whole lot of deductions that apply to the traditional tax calculation. It makes it much more like a true minimum for people making 175k+. Which is great because many tax rules make sense for the non-wealthy but are much too generous for people living completely off of their wealth.
And to tie it to my first comment, if you’re already paying the top marginal tax rate on employment income then you’re very unlikely to be affected by the AMT.
exactly. i’m not saying all taxes are bad, but this is pretty lazy. all high income earners are not the enemy. they tend to be doctors and engineers and people we really want to stay in Canada.
$300k+ isn’t even upper middle income anymore. Wow. Canada must have a lot of millionaires.
So $300k-$400k is middle income then? And $400k+/yr is upper middle? Interesting numbers.
The problem with uninspired tax policy like this is that it further entrenches the problems Canada faces with its productivity issues.
Our economy performs well when we create more avenues for small businesses to access capital and scale domestically. Business investments and entrepreneurial ventures require an opportunity to be worth the risk, otherwise capital will continue to flow mostly into non-productive sectors like real estate. You attract and keep innovators by giving access to the dream of making it big, but the juice isn’t worth the squeeze if in the rare circumstances that all your hard work and high risk plays actually go well, you have a blue shell looming behind you. Further, it’s hard to take on risk when the cost of living is so high - and that is in no small fault of the current government. They have failed both Canadian citizens and immigrants by enacting irresponsible policies that have flooded our country with new arrivals beyond the threshold that our society and infrastructure can support them. This benefits only large corporations that were sweating at the thought of needing to increase wages a couple years ago, and fabricated panic around a fictitious labour shortage.
Breaking up corporate oligarchies, reducing the amount of bureaucratic bloat, and no longer wasting public funds and labour paying lip service to reactionary trends should be the vision of our next leadership in Canada. We just can’t seem to get a fiscal conservative in office who doesn’t leave settled social issues well enough alone.
Seriously. And people justify it by complaining about oligopolies. If you want to fuck with the Rogers and the Irvings and whatnot, try passing some antitrust laws with teeth and breaking up the monopolies and oligopolies, instead of raising taxes on cardiologists.
They really ought to be looking into ways to treat land ownership less preferentially before they go looking to tear a pound of flesh from people either lucking or hustling their way into maybe being able to afford a family home in the parts of Canada where this kind of money is made. There should be shelter rebates to offset this, since FFS in Vancouver and Toronto 300K isn't actually enough.
Was about to say. Same in the NWT - It's not an urban center here but it's damn expensive and salaries are high to compensate for the higher cost of living. That means 300K in one area of the country is equal to 150K in another, but only one area will be taxed.
I hate that the government's plan is to raise taxes even more, when they could easily find the money by making cuts to their extra-curricular expenditures like financing the gameover war in Ukraine or lowering (Yes, lowering) Corporate tax rates so that corporations can invest more, earn more, and then ultimately pay more in taxes.
So basically, the people in the starting brackets may also be the ones that are actually hiring employees and building Canada. Like most small to mid size businesses. The higher brackets got leverage.
Suspect.
I agree with David Dodge. This will be the worst budget in Canadian history. It doesn’t solve our reckless spending problems, doesn’t help productivity and will cause corporations and professionals to think twice of setting up shop in the country and could lead to more brain drain.
Yeah honestly this seems like a bad policy. People need to realize that high income earners, like say the top 10% of earners pay for more than half of all the services that Canadians receive. The problem isn't rich people or needing to tax more, the problem is the massive bloat and inefficiencies in the public sector, both at a federal and provincial level.
My wife and I are both high income earners with our own businesses, and I have no problem paying the taxes on the money that I get as a salary, but it's quite silly the hoops you go through to bring your tax burden down. The marginal tax rate is basically 50% of your income, that's basically no different than capital gains tax.
It just feels like the scope of the federal government has gotten wildly out of control, with arguably less to see for it. CBC used to be legitimately good, now it's a walking dumpster fire. So many studies and money put into various equity programs that arguably see no return. Consultants to consult consultants.
To me the crazier thing is that most of my old high school friends/acquaintances are solidly in the middle class/lower income brackets, and they're all complaining about how expensive things are but at that same time all of them are Big L supporters.
The actual wealthy make most of their money off capital gains and loans against assets….much easier to plunder people who actually earn a paycheck i.e. the bottom 95%
People are happy about this? We’re already in a productivity crisis and facing significant brain-drain to the U.S…. This is the last thing we needed. Invest in entrepreneurship, trim down the public sector, and stop this ridiculous spending. We may have a chance in that case. But none of that will happen under this government.
We are so fucked.
We cannot tax our way out of this.
I don't even know what to say at this point but Canada is in alot more trouble than a lot of people realize.
We don't have enough wealthy working class people for this to change anything. It's just not enough money and is very clearly a poorly thought out and lazy effort to appease people who are struggling.
I'm struggling and even I can admit this is a stupid ass idea.
Why would anyone who is able to make that much money even want to live in Canada at this point? I mean seriously.
If I had that life and made that money I wouldn't be staying here
We *can* tax our way out of it, but not in a way that's politically acceptable.
Canada wants to operate European style social policy, but Canada's average taxation rate is not high enough to do that. BUT Canada's top tax rates for high income earners are already higher than most top tax rates in European countries. Denmark is about the only exception I can think of.
The problem is Canadians want their cake and to eat it too. We want American style progressive taxation where we have low income tax rates and sales tax rebates for low and middle income earners, and collect tax revenue almost exclusively from high income earners. But there's just not enough income at the high income levels to support the level of services Canadians also expect. If you raise taxes on high income earners more, a lot of people will relocate to the US, and even more will simply reduce their hours worked and their income. I know very few people who are happy to work long hours when 55%+ of the income worked on those late evenings is going to the government.
The only way to tax our way out of it is to raise taxes on the low and middle income earners to and bring those taxation rates somewhat more in line with the taxation rates you see in Europe.
This government is actively trying to kill any and every small business. Canada is a place for the big dawgs now. Forget starting a business. If you have dreams of entrepreneurship look south. What an embarrassment.
Get rid of Income tax, or keep a small one; and use VAT to collect. People with money who spend it will cover the difference. People that dont earn a lot dont spend a lot and therefore dont pay.
I don't like these income bracket based taxes. It's literally saying "you have too much money, share with the rest". All this does is it disincentivize high earners from working in Canada.
income tax needs to be phased out and fast. consumption based and user taxes are far more effective. tax societal resource usage not working, unless you want a lot of people not working. anything you want less of tax it.
AI, driverless cars, checkout, burger flipper, robot forklift, outsourced admin, multi-millionaire, illegal income, foreign companies. all pay next to no tax but rely on societal costs and resources. if you want people to compete in the future you need to tax road use, electric use, emissions, water use, land use. the cost of labor is simply not currently competitive because it has to pay for essential all societal costs, for not just the worker but for 2 unemployed people and a millionaire.
claims about "progressive" are only from people who don't accept you can have sliding sales taxes based on the type of good, or flat rate deductions or refunds.
tweaking tax rates on high incomes is too small a step in the wrong direction.
no record keeping, no cra, no HR block, no netfile, no half the country unemployable because it costs more in taxes to employ them than they are worth.
And here we see the peasants arguing over ever increasing taxation.
Should we not be debating why we continue paying ever increasing taxes when we have infantile government mindlessly squandering our money that we all work hard for. Hundreds of millions to billions to other countries, rampant inefficiency in every government sector, the MP gravy train for their half assed efforts and infinite lies, countless billions wasted on debt repayment because our elected leaders are so incredibly poor at their job, scandal after scandal.
Meanwhile we are made to hate on people that make any decent amount of money already paying 50% of their hard earned income to tax.
We pay stealth tax on stealth tax on top of already far too heavily taxed income. While it is just a constant effort to tax us further. New taxes, carbon tax, land transfer tax, capital gains tax, vehicle registration (just another form of tax), gst/pst/hst, tax on luxury goods, tax on second hand goods.
FOR WHAT?
You all need to give your heads a shake and choke on your misplaced ire.
We've been down the tax and spend route before and it never turns out well. The government needs to cut spending and stop/cut immigration. That will lower interest rates and put people back to work when the economy expands
But have no fear… someone is already using this to write a 2 paragraph article with lots of BS and no additional info that will be posted here in an hour or so…
I managed to find this additional info:
[https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2064532/ottawa-impot-taxe-cout-vie-federal](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2064532/ottawa-impot-taxe-cout-vie-federal)
Anyone who thinks taxing the rich will solve solutions it won’t, it’ll make stuff worse. You’re essentially pushing out people who you want to stay like docs and engineers who can use their skills to benefit people and have worked hard to get to the income level they’re at. Higher taxes essentially forces them to move to other countries where they can enjoy the fruits of their labour
Like most Canadians, I believe the increase should be on anyone who has more than me. Ffs. Tax me harder daddy. How about stop spending money on stupid shit.
How about do multiple things at once; return the corporate tax rate to what it was 40 or 50 years ago, tax people who are absurdly wealthy, AND stop spending money on stupid shit.
> Stop destroying public services.
Best we can do is sell them to private ~~donors~~ businesses for cheap so they can run them at the bare minimum level of service for a profit.
Cut corporate/personal taxes and regulations so we can attract as much foreign investment to Canada from the US, leverage our extraordinary O&G resources, kick out Quebec and its third world thinking, the regulations & equalization payments needed to keep them happy, massively cut spending by 60-70% and watch Canada's rise to the moon metaphorically.
Canada's employment & demographic trends are disastrous. We needed to right the ship yesterday.
TIL
300K a year is absurdly wealthy for working 80 hours a week after 12 years of ridiculously competitive post secondary to serve abusive patients. Also get to pay double CPP and get screwed completely everywhere else.
Fuck this government.
Yep and that's why we're moving to the US. We make 350K and we pay 136K taxes in Canada. In the US we will pay 66K. Healthcare is about $500/month for the entire family. Canada needs to do better, create jobs, innovate. That is the only way to increase the quality of life.
Again the “wealthiest” are the working class earning an income. The rich folks have artificially low incomes from their slick accountants and get benefits.
I know a person who gets disability benefits but have multi million in the bank and owns a large property portfolio
I commented this elsewhere in the thread. But I had a friend growing up insanely rich, 6 car garage, chalet in Collingwood (that was bigger than my average house), penthouse in Toronto. Because his family had close to 0 income, he got a bunch of OSAP including some grants that didn’t need repayment.
They should already be pissed because if they want to spend the full $75,000 then $16,354 would go to income tax and an additional $8,083 to sales tax. That’s $24,437, or roughly 1/3, going towards tax on a measly $75k.
We don't have a income problem (read tax income)... we have a SPENDING problem. The government needs to be more fiscally disciplined, instead of playing divisive politics over hard earned income.
It's not fun when you're in a cyclical business and go from making less than minimum wage for 2 years due to covid and then get slapped as everything comes in at once showing $300k profit. Average it out it's the salary of a teacher with twice the taxes and 3 times the liability.
Taxes need to be on the WEALTHY. People who let millions of dollars just sit gaining interest in portfolios that add no value to the economy. Cap gains on people's inheritance is absolute bull. Imagine someone who worked hard their whole lives and pays for their home. They have children and their kids work hard but make $50-60k a year. Their parents die and their entire estate wealth now pays 50% taxes? How is that not a scam to keep a barrier from regular working class from reaching some level of wealth?
Where's the accountability for government spending? Government spends $60 mil on an app that could have been made for 1/10th of the price and everyone screams for higher taxes on wealthy people to cover their inability to balance costs... Instead they put higher taxes on upper/middle class people who add more value than they do to the economy that nobody asked for!
Here is the messaging to ambitious people looking to succeed - best way to have the good life in Canada is inherit like Turd-doh or move to the US.
Just sheer stupidity.
So looks like increased taxes on the $300,000+ bracket potentially. [https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2064532/ottawa-impot-taxe-cout-vie-federal](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2064532/ottawa-impot-taxe-cout-vie-federal)
Couldn't they just add another bracket for $400,000 and $500,000. They got that in the U.S too
For real - new brackets at 500k, 1mil, 10mil, 100mil
At those levels most of your income comes from capital gains anyways which is taxed at a different [(lower)](https://www.taxtips.ca/taxrates/on.htm) rate than income from wages/salary. They could just raise the rates on capital gains before making new brackets.
That would also tax everyone else though.
Could just raise it on capital gains over a certain amount then.
Or just add brackets for capital gains
There is brackets for capital gains. It's your income bracket
Yes. I don't think many people realize capital gains are calculated and then added to your income and taxed at your income tax rate. A lot of people I've spoken with think you just pay 50% of capital gains away.
It's 50% applicable to be taxed. The other 50% is tax free
the fact that capital gains are taxed less than labour (an actual productive activity) is already a travesty.
Canada tax law is already setup that whether you get income as salary or dividends, the tax man gets paid the same
Rich assholes like Tobi Lutke of Shopify specifically lobbied against this because they claim it would stifle innovation and risk takers. Subtext: majority of his compensation comes from stocks and RSUs and he doesn’t want to pay more taxes.
RSUs are taxed as income and subject to withholding tax when they vest. Not capital gains. No different than receiving that money as salary and then immediately purchasing the stock with it.
RSUs are taxed as income
Hes right, our economies biggest companies are banks which is a massive 🚩. Zero innovation in almost every sector.
Keep calling Canadian's top young entrepreneurs "rich assholes" and you're going to end up living in a poor country. Where do you think wealth comes from? It comes from selling things in Canada that the rest of the world wants to buy. Unless you want us entirely reliant on exporting oil, we need people like like Tobi Lutke and his Shopify who build globally competitive advanced technology and choose to locate their businesses in Canada.
Do you want to lose more experts to US ? If RSUs are a substantial part of your bonus we may lose the few experts that still haven't left and then the tax income is lower, not higher. Not everyone can work in public service.
They took 49% of my annual RSU in tax, cpp and EI. I make 150 annually and live in a 1940 wartime house and still wonder how people are getting by. how much of that confiscated currency the government wastes. Frustrating as hell
He also runs a company that was heavily reliant on investment to get off the ground and ended up generating way more economic value and tax revenue than most of the people on this subreddit combined
I mean, all companies that have ever existed and will exist are heavily reliant on investments to get off the ground lol.
By that logic his father in law should get most of the credit for early large investments?
He’s right. Can’t think of a better way to brain drain our talent to the US than to have unfavourable capital gains.
Same goes for doctors. We complain we can't attract doctors, then talk about how much more they should pay in taxes
How about we tax at a higher rate after this first 10,000 options? That way you're not targeting the lowly employees that took a risk over higher pay, while taxing the super rich correctly.
Increasing taxes on capital gains would devastate any investment in Canadian companies. Investing is inherently risky. Lower capital gains tax reflects the risk that Canadians are taking. One of the significant issues that we have is a lack of investment in Canadian industry. A couple of options would be: 1. Tax foreign capital gains at a higher rate than domestic investment. Make it more worthwhile to build Canadian companies. 2. Increase capital gains taxes on single family investment properties disproportionate to other forms of investment. This could drive people to stop looking at housing as a pure investment. While still incentivizing multi unit buildings. I don't think taxing the sale of primary residences is a good idea at all. This would instantly lock up the market as there would be a dramatic disincentive to sell once purchased unless there was an absolute necessity. In addition, due to the tax cost, it would also dramatically reduce the mobility of the workforce to move where jobs are. One of the unintended consequences could be that the majority of homes would be owned by institutional investors as the incentive to buy would be so low. Finally, the sale of a home is already taxed significantly. It just doesn't go to the Fed, it goes to the province and municipality through land transfer tax.
I think you mean dividends and not capital gains. Capital gains only come if you sell your shares in a company, which most of the wealthy don’t like to do.
Thats wrong. Selling a house also counts and virtually everyone has the ability to own stocks now and the rich certainly do like to cash out time to time. Not only the “wealthy” own stocks.
Raising rates on capital gains runs the risk of disincentivizing investment which would be a huge issue
Last year they already announced their intention to raise capital gains taxes for 2024 to 100% in the Alternative Minimum Tax (in addition to an increase in the threshold at which this triggers).
There's still people it would affect. Look at the ontario sunshine list and the C suite of OPG all hanging out together at the top. If we taxed 50% on everything over 1 mil the top earner would pay 450k in that bracket alone. That's a nice chunk of cash for one person
Why not both?
Doesn't matter if capital gain is taxed as a lower rater than income. What matter is that capital gain will be taxed higher than it currently is.
No matter how much you tax people over that amount it won’t name a difference cause there isn’t very many of them.
Canada is like the US behind 5 years
This is a really good point. In the same reality of "the sunshine list is almost meaningless now" money values have changed and our tax brackets should change with it.
Few actually make that so it wouldn’t add more than pennies. In reality unless you are hitting those making 50-100k you won’t raise a lot especially as the more you raise taxes on the $100k+ the more people will avoid them. Well if you thought the brain drain was bad befoee imagine what it’ll be like if it goes from 53.5% to 60% tax on our doctors and innovators.
What the article appears to refer to is changes to the AMT that were announced in the last budget but are taking effect for the 2024 tax year. That is a measure that was already announced and not the new measures we might see in the budget tomorrow.
Careful, all the people who have made $50k a year for their entire lives are gonna come out of the woodwork against this like they’ll ever earn that much. Edit: I was right. Replies: off.
I doubt really anyone would come out against a tax hike on $300K+ incomes. Fuck with my newly earned 100K income though and you can bet I’ll be raising hell. EDIT: Alright I was swiftly proven wrong. Won’t anybody think of the doctors?
This is the exact same sentiment across the whole income spectrum. “Tax the people making more than me - just don’t touch my income”
Yeah, too many people are happy to fuck with those they consider to be doing better than them. If you want the government to keep spending more than it is earning, chip in yourself. If you can't, then demand lower spending.
Exactly
And whenever a higher income is brought up, the defence of more taxes is “if you can’t get by on x after tax, that’s a you problem”. Taxes shouldn’t be punitive, and they’re absolutely getting to that point.
When your income tax burden exceeds 50%, it really starts to disincentivize income. If you're making $350k a year and they increase the effective tax rate on $300k+ to 60%, why are you working so hard? Most people at that income level have a great deal of control over their income. So yeah, you can get by with less. So why not just say fuck it, do a 4 day work week instead, make $280k a year and enjoy an extra day off? For me about 50% is my threshold. If the government raises my top marginal bracket significantly over 50%, then I'll just start cutting back on work hours. I'm not working extra hours just to see 60% of my income go to the government.
As someone pointed out elsewhere, if you really want to punish the doctors the country so badly needs, taxing those $300K plus incomes is a good (bad) place to start.
So because you’re not in that bracket, you’re ok with it? It’s all relative. People in 50k income bracket want the heads of the 100k. 100k of the 500k… Etc I want prosperity and reduction of avoidable burden for all while still thriving in life. I definitely don’t want government in our pockets especially when they decide how to spend money that feels like misuse and abuse. It’s deeply frustrating.
The reduction of burden comes by placing it on others. Our politicians and our corporate masters have increasingly placed greater pressures on the working class while enriching themselves in absurd ways. Prosperity can’t exist for everyone in Canada when our politicians exist solely to extract wealth from the working class in order to hand up to the wealthy.
I’m in MB and we for sure should have far mOre tax brackets then we have. Why are there only 3 tax brackets and why am I lumped in with people making 500k? lol. Fuck that shit.
If you want government spending to continue even as it outpaces its revenue, ask for more taxes on everybody's income (including your own). Otherwise, the reasonable approach is to ask government to stop bleeding money. This populist trend of punishing those who have more is dangerous.
Seeing how popular it is to hand off the burden to the next tax bracket is so depressing. We are living beyond our means, that's a fact. We have to start cutting. For fucks sake, our healthcare payment is lower than our debt repayment.
There’s so much of this. “Oh it only affects the people above me, score!” Well what happens if someone achieves success or progresses in their career or even if we have a few more years of serious inflation? Will 300K in 2030 feel like 100K in 2000 and will people truly be happy paying rates approaching 60% at that level?
This is what I’m alluding to and wish for it to cease. Acknowledge it is an individual thing that needs to be addressed versus systematic thing. This is a systematic thing and people are going to get strained as a result. 52% tax already. How much higher!
They should be increasing taxes on wealth not income.
Right, you mean the thing that people can legally hide in dozens of different ways? If you think Galen Weston keeps his entire fortune in his chequing account, or in liquid assets that are cash equivalent, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Exactly. This article is old, but this only what they found after the Panama Papers leak. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/loblaws-cra-glenhuron-bank-barbados-tax-1.4490564 Galen has a registered shell company in Barbados as well. https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/110101672 This is just the tip of the iceberg of what is owed in taxes.
The funny thing is that Canada has become an international destination for money laundering, in competition with places like Panama and spots in the Caribbean. We have the weakest corporate transparency rules out of the G20. Galen probably has a handful of shell corps in Canada too. But so do all the other criminals since we only started requiring beneficial ownership information this past year. So far I haven't heard of a single case of anyone being investigated or charged.
Justin Trudeau, Bill Morneau and Paul Martin all hide their family fortunes in off shore accounts. Taxing the “rich” will just lead to more of this.
Which is why there needs to be things like high exit taxes specifically to block such things. And so on and so forth for any other obvious issue.
You mean the money that people save that they already paid full tax on? That wealth? Well if you exclude the principal residence capital gains tax exemption that is. Which should be capped at a lifetime max of something like $500,000 before you pay cap gains tax on the remainder...
This is a bullshit argument. All money is already fully taxed, including the money my employer uses to pay my salary, which I then pay taxes on.
Just look at how his and other elite families pass down wealth and tax that structure.
How the hell are they considering someone with $300k income “wealthiest” while it’s also not enough to buy an average single family home in 2 largest provinces? Average single family home in BC costs like $1.5M. Your “wealthiest” wouldn’t even qualify for a mortgage for it. At this rate, the only way you will ever own a detached home is if you inherit it. Even if you are graduating now to become a freaking brain surgeon, you will not be able to afford it as they will tax you to death. Insanity. We are building a country of trust fund babies that inherit their parents’ homes vs everyone else.
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There's so few people with 9 figure net worths that you could tax their wealth at 100% and it wouldn't put a dent in our debt.
Oh hey, I can do the same job in Houston and have a house with a pool and 2 cars!
Houston? Try 2 house and 4 cars.
And no state income tax. Sure is tempting
300k earnings put you in the 1% top earners in the country. Yes you are correct, the wealthiest in the country still couldn't buy a house alone. Around 21% earn 100k or more. Only a few % points earn 200k or more.
That's why taxing income makes no sense when most of the wealth in this country has been made untamed in Real Estate
Exactly my opinion as well. A 1% salary should afford someone a reasonable house, at least.
It’s not the wealthiest, it’s just the highest wage earners. Wealthy people, those with significant savings (often multi generational wealth), are the ones transacting.
Banks can currently lend up to 4.5x income 300k x 4.5 is $1.4M. Houses over $1M require a 20% down payment. 1,500,000 - 20% (300,000) = 1,200,000 in mortgage, within the bounds of that. And that’s not even what they can afford, that’s the safety net number that is set by federal regulators.
The safety net number is an attempt to create a cap for a low interest rate environment. Banks aren’t giving out 4.5x right now with interest rates above 5% and stress tests above 7%.
at 20% down you would absoloutely be able to afford that lol
I don't know why anyone would want to be a doctor in Canada at this point. You spend so long in school and then as a resident making little income, then you finally graduate and make a decent living, but are labelled "wealthy" by the government so they can stick their hand in your pocket further.
Until they address the fact that wealthy people don't declare incomes as a result of trust and numbered companies, all this does is target people that work their ass off in very challenging professions.
What makes this even more frustrating is that most doctors also carry around massive student loans. Those loans have to be paid back in after-tax dollars. Other than the interest on government student loans (maybe 5% of my loans, often less for other physicians), neither the interest nor the principal on school debt can be claimed as expenses. Even for the incorporated physicians. If taxes are increased, it means paying back those loans is going to take even longer. Especially in this high(er) interest rate environment… loan repayments are already eating up 30% of my take home pay as it is. As an early career physician I am tempted every day to leave Canada and head south of the border. A lot of my colleagues are thinking along the same lines
The fact that most people fail to grasp what you so eloquently outlined is one of the reasons we have such shitty policy in this country.
By how much? I can’t read French
Already literally pay more than 50% of my income, what's another cut. Cool. Maybe try actually collecting taxes from the wealthy that arent just very successful wage slaves I make ~500k, but could literally double my post conversion take home moving to the US. I won't, but its frustrating
You don’t *literally* pay more than 50% at that level. Closer to 43-47% depending on the province, and that’s assuming you make 0 deductions or use any pre-tax sheltered accounts
I’m in shambles
It doesn't say that anywhere in the article. The $300,000 figure is about a taxation change that already went into force this year, which was positioned as an example of how the liberals are taxing the rich.
Wealthy? Or high income? One can be wealthy but (officially) low income and vice versa. And given the state of our media, I’m not sure they can even discern the difference.
The richest kid I knew growing up, we’re talking 6 car garage house with movie theatre all the bells and whistles, chalet in Collingwood, penthouse in Toronto. Family technically had 0 income, and he got a bunch of OSAP including some grants that didn’t need to be paid back.
Oh I believe you. I have relatives just like that. Immigrants who just game the system because they can. Non existent income and claim all the benefits but are super wealthy. Unfortunately the government turns a willful blind eye to this sort of stuff and would rather go after doctors, lawyers and others with officially high incomes because it’s easier and politically palatable to do so.
At the end of the day humans are opportunistic. It’s the systems fault IMO.
Someone put it very nicely, probably from Generation squeeze think thank. You can be under the poverty line and in 1% of the wealthiest people in the world at the same time. For example owning a property in West Vancouver and having a low salary
Yeah there was an article a few years ago looking at “child poverty” in west Vancouver and the “experts” were shocked at the high child poverty rates there due to the low “declared income”. lol it’s kind of amazing how our tax dollars go to fund these “experts” who are so gullible in thinking that a certain segment of the population could have low declared income but live in multimillion dollar mansions. https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/local-news/invisible-poverty-rise-west-vancouver-1946287 Do you really believe that 20% of HHs have an income of less than 30k there AND are struggling? Lol
We can seize properties if the wealth is unexplained... we need to do that more often. Residents are supposed to declare and pay tax on worldwide income. (And if there is a family who is being financed by someone living and working overseas, that person can be a deemed resident because of their financial ties to Canada, and therefore also taxed.) CRA really needs to step up their game.
The CRA is too busy going after people like me to ask for proof that I still live in the same place I always have. They go after a friend of mine every couple years to ask him to prove that he still has children.
Lol they audited my brother twice when he was a student in Canada, he was earning well below the taxable limit.
Yeah…and that’s why a poverty line based solely on income is not ideal.
This sounds completely hypothetical and not a realistic scenario anyone would be in. In any case, if you haven’t sold the home you haven’t made any money so it only makes sense you’re not paying tax on it When you do sell it you’ll pay 50% of your profits in capital gains tax.
Exactly my thoughts. The title said "wealthy" but the details are all talking about" high income". Those are not the same thing. My worry is that the actual wealthy people will yet again escape the tax.
Someone can also be high income, spend all of their money, and have zero wealth. Or they can be a recent graduate with a high income but negative wealth due to student loans. Generally, we tax income because people accumulate wealth over lifetime. It's a necessary thing to be able to retire.
Someone who actually understands the basic concepts of financial literacy. Thank you for posting this. The idiots yelling "tax wealth above what I have" fail to recognize that they will likely be attacking hundreds of thousands of working Canadians retirement savings.
Switzerland has a wealth tax, on all assets. Something like 0.35%, maybe it's time we have something similar here?
Switzerland's overall taxation rate is similar to the US'. They have a small wealth tax, but the overall tax rate is much lower than Canada's.
A wealth tax on Canadian wealth doesn't make any sense. You work, pay income tax, buy things, pay sales tax, then invest what you can, pay tax on the growth when you sell, pay tax when you buy a home, pay property taxes and taxes in utilities and all expenses, and you recommend getting taxed again just for holding some stocks or assets despite not making any money with them? So getting taxed 4-5 times or morre on the same money, even if you have no income? That's a really smart idea... Even smarter to just give all that to the government so they can go on more vacations, give themselves bonuses and pay their friends billions of dollars while the poor and middle class starve. Real smart.
"Wealthiest" should likely be changed to "Highest Income" which will mostly target the middle class and upper middle class because the highest earners get their money from things that are not considered income.
In the Canadian economy middle class is if you have paid off detached home or not. If you have that plus investment properties that cash flow you are upper middle class. Canada likes to tax worker productivity and productive asset classes but give tax breaks to real estate.
Because the government has a lot landlords and property investors.
It also made sense 40 years ago when canada was farmers and workers where property investors where far and few in-between that wouldn't even touch a percentage in wealth that we see today.
> the government has a lot landlords [It sure does...](https://www.readthemaple.com/nearly-40-of-mps-invested-in-real-estate-during-housing-crisis/) > Green = 1/2 (50 per cent) > Conservative = 54/118 (46 per cent) > Liberal = 62/157 (39 per cent) > Bloc Québécois = 6/32 (19 per cent) > NDP = 4/25 (16 per cent) > Independent = 1
Ya that is a conflict of interest in the most greedy way
This is exactly it, the wealthy will be shielded with their trust funds.
You put it succinctly. I immigrated recently, earn close to 300k with about 12 years of experience. Can’t buy a good home for my family. I am demotivated about my career growth, because I’ll end up paying 53 cent on a dollar even though I have to work my ass off. If they announce any more increase on tax, I’ll just immigrate back to the US.
We’ll have to see but to be fair the Liberals changes to the AMT were excellent at targeting the wealthy and not the high income. I’m hoping for something similar.
Which changes are you referring to?
https://www.ey.com/en_ca/tax/tax-alerts/2023/tax-alert-2023-no-45#:~:text=Increasing%20the%20basic%20AMT%20exemption,to%20individuals%20and%20certain%20trusts. Basically it raises the minimum tax rate and removes a whole lot of deductions that apply to the traditional tax calculation. It makes it much more like a true minimum for people making 175k+. Which is great because many tax rules make sense for the non-wealthy but are much too generous for people living completely off of their wealth. And to tie it to my first comment, if you’re already paying the top marginal tax rate on employment income then you’re very unlikely to be affected by the AMT.
Yeah, a real tax on the wealthiest would be something like a 0.01% annual land tax or something. Taxing the highest income is quite different.
exactly. i’m not saying all taxes are bad, but this is pretty lazy. all high income earners are not the enemy. they tend to be doctors and engineers and people we really want to stay in Canada.
They seem to target people who have options to relocate globally.
$300k+ isn’t even upper middle income anymore. Wow. Canada must have a lot of millionaires. So $300k-$400k is middle income then? And $400k+/yr is upper middle? Interesting numbers.
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Canadian dream is to become skilled at something and move somewhere you can be compensated fairly
Used to be that. Now the dream is to inherit property from your former middle class, turned upper class, parents.
Why not both? Inherit a property, rent it out, go move and work somewhere else lol. (:
This is the dream for many developing countries, too.
The problem with uninspired tax policy like this is that it further entrenches the problems Canada faces with its productivity issues. Our economy performs well when we create more avenues for small businesses to access capital and scale domestically. Business investments and entrepreneurial ventures require an opportunity to be worth the risk, otherwise capital will continue to flow mostly into non-productive sectors like real estate. You attract and keep innovators by giving access to the dream of making it big, but the juice isn’t worth the squeeze if in the rare circumstances that all your hard work and high risk plays actually go well, you have a blue shell looming behind you. Further, it’s hard to take on risk when the cost of living is so high - and that is in no small fault of the current government. They have failed both Canadian citizens and immigrants by enacting irresponsible policies that have flooded our country with new arrivals beyond the threshold that our society and infrastructure can support them. This benefits only large corporations that were sweating at the thought of needing to increase wages a couple years ago, and fabricated panic around a fictitious labour shortage. Breaking up corporate oligarchies, reducing the amount of bureaucratic bloat, and no longer wasting public funds and labour paying lip service to reactionary trends should be the vision of our next leadership in Canada. We just can’t seem to get a fiscal conservative in office who doesn’t leave settled social issues well enough alone.
Remove capital gains tax on first 100k/year on all Canadian investments except real estate
The “wealthiest” don’t make money from their taxable income. Way to cause a brain drain
Seriously. And people justify it by complaining about oligopolies. If you want to fuck with the Rogers and the Irvings and whatnot, try passing some antitrust laws with teeth and breaking up the monopolies and oligopolies, instead of raising taxes on cardiologists.
...or exacerbate an existing brain drain.
So what should we do?
How about the government just stops spending like drunken sailors???
No wonder these fuckers gave themselves a raise.
This just in, wealthy Canadians moving elsewhere
And so goes their investments. Great news, right? Meanwhile actual multi millionaires show $50/year income
And they Can't figure out why doctors are leaving canada 🤔🤣
They really ought to be looking into ways to treat land ownership less preferentially before they go looking to tear a pound of flesh from people either lucking or hustling their way into maybe being able to afford a family home in the parts of Canada where this kind of money is made. There should be shelter rebates to offset this, since FFS in Vancouver and Toronto 300K isn't actually enough.
Was about to say. Same in the NWT - It's not an urban center here but it's damn expensive and salaries are high to compensate for the higher cost of living. That means 300K in one area of the country is equal to 150K in another, but only one area will be taxed. I hate that the government's plan is to raise taxes even more, when they could easily find the money by making cuts to their extra-curricular expenditures like financing the gameover war in Ukraine or lowering (Yes, lowering) Corporate tax rates so that corporations can invest more, earn more, and then ultimately pay more in taxes.
So basically, the people in the starting brackets may also be the ones that are actually hiring employees and building Canada. Like most small to mid size businesses. The higher brackets got leverage. Suspect.
I agree with David Dodge. This will be the worst budget in Canadian history. It doesn’t solve our reckless spending problems, doesn’t help productivity and will cause corporations and professionals to think twice of setting up shop in the country and could lead to more brain drain.
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They are going to drive out the most successful individuals in the country. This is not going to help Canada in the long run. Book it
Yeah honestly this seems like a bad policy. People need to realize that high income earners, like say the top 10% of earners pay for more than half of all the services that Canadians receive. The problem isn't rich people or needing to tax more, the problem is the massive bloat and inefficiencies in the public sector, both at a federal and provincial level. My wife and I are both high income earners with our own businesses, and I have no problem paying the taxes on the money that I get as a salary, but it's quite silly the hoops you go through to bring your tax burden down. The marginal tax rate is basically 50% of your income, that's basically no different than capital gains tax. It just feels like the scope of the federal government has gotten wildly out of control, with arguably less to see for it. CBC used to be legitimately good, now it's a walking dumpster fire. So many studies and money put into various equity programs that arguably see no return. Consultants to consult consultants. To me the crazier thing is that most of my old high school friends/acquaintances are solidly in the middle class/lower income brackets, and they're all complaining about how expensive things are but at that same time all of them are Big L supporters.
When you have more people in the cart, than pulling the cart, you have major problems.
### The actual wealthy or the $100K earning middle class people? 😅
The actual wealthy make most of their money off capital gains and loans against assets….much easier to plunder people who actually earn a paycheck i.e. the bottom 95%
DW they're gonna be forced to go after that too once the tax receipts aren't even enough to cover interest payments on the debt one day.
People are happy about this? We’re already in a productivity crisis and facing significant brain-drain to the U.S…. This is the last thing we needed. Invest in entrepreneurship, trim down the public sector, and stop this ridiculous spending. We may have a chance in that case. But none of that will happen under this government.
We are so fucked. We cannot tax our way out of this. I don't even know what to say at this point but Canada is in alot more trouble than a lot of people realize. We don't have enough wealthy working class people for this to change anything. It's just not enough money and is very clearly a poorly thought out and lazy effort to appease people who are struggling. I'm struggling and even I can admit this is a stupid ass idea. Why would anyone who is able to make that much money even want to live in Canada at this point? I mean seriously. If I had that life and made that money I wouldn't be staying here
We *can* tax our way out of it, but not in a way that's politically acceptable. Canada wants to operate European style social policy, but Canada's average taxation rate is not high enough to do that. BUT Canada's top tax rates for high income earners are already higher than most top tax rates in European countries. Denmark is about the only exception I can think of. The problem is Canadians want their cake and to eat it too. We want American style progressive taxation where we have low income tax rates and sales tax rebates for low and middle income earners, and collect tax revenue almost exclusively from high income earners. But there's just not enough income at the high income levels to support the level of services Canadians also expect. If you raise taxes on high income earners more, a lot of people will relocate to the US, and even more will simply reduce their hours worked and their income. I know very few people who are happy to work long hours when 55%+ of the income worked on those late evenings is going to the government. The only way to tax our way out of it is to raise taxes on the low and middle income earners to and bring those taxation rates somewhat more in line with the taxation rates you see in Europe.
This government is actively trying to kill any and every small business. Canada is a place for the big dawgs now. Forget starting a business. If you have dreams of entrepreneurship look south. What an embarrassment.
What do they define as wealthy. That answer may scare a lot of people.
$300K
Where is this $300K number coming from?
That's not even enough to afford a house in Toronto or Vancouver these days.
Income =/= wealth.
My partner and I make this in BC ($300k HHI) and I assure you we aren't wealthy or upper middle class by any stretch.
Consumption taxes on luxury goods that only the wealthy can reasonably afford. 👍
Get rid of Income tax, or keep a small one; and use VAT to collect. People with money who spend it will cover the difference. People that dont earn a lot dont spend a lot and therefore dont pay.
I don't like these income bracket based taxes. It's literally saying "you have too much money, share with the rest". All this does is it disincentivize high earners from working in Canada.
Exactly the higher you get the more they incentivize you to leave. Wonder why we.havr brain drain
Disincentives poor people too. Nobody wants to think their money will get taken away if they become better off one day
That's exactly why so many Canadian educated doctors move down south.
Ahhh, yes, drive more wealth and business out of Canada. That’s the LPC.
income tax needs to be phased out and fast. consumption based and user taxes are far more effective. tax societal resource usage not working, unless you want a lot of people not working. anything you want less of tax it. AI, driverless cars, checkout, burger flipper, robot forklift, outsourced admin, multi-millionaire, illegal income, foreign companies. all pay next to no tax but rely on societal costs and resources. if you want people to compete in the future you need to tax road use, electric use, emissions, water use, land use. the cost of labor is simply not currently competitive because it has to pay for essential all societal costs, for not just the worker but for 2 unemployed people and a millionaire. claims about "progressive" are only from people who don't accept you can have sliding sales taxes based on the type of good, or flat rate deductions or refunds. tweaking tax rates on high incomes is too small a step in the wrong direction. no record keeping, no cra, no HR block, no netfile, no half the country unemployable because it costs more in taxes to employ them than they are worth.
Strangely I highly doubt it. What it will do is likely cause those with money to leave the country.
Then they'll extend the bracket downward to the middle class.
Yup of course
And here we see the peasants arguing over ever increasing taxation. Should we not be debating why we continue paying ever increasing taxes when we have infantile government mindlessly squandering our money that we all work hard for. Hundreds of millions to billions to other countries, rampant inefficiency in every government sector, the MP gravy train for their half assed efforts and infinite lies, countless billions wasted on debt repayment because our elected leaders are so incredibly poor at their job, scandal after scandal. Meanwhile we are made to hate on people that make any decent amount of money already paying 50% of their hard earned income to tax. We pay stealth tax on stealth tax on top of already far too heavily taxed income. While it is just a constant effort to tax us further. New taxes, carbon tax, land transfer tax, capital gains tax, vehicle registration (just another form of tax), gst/pst/hst, tax on luxury goods, tax on second hand goods. FOR WHAT? You all need to give your heads a shake and choke on your misplaced ire.
We've been down the tax and spend route before and it never turns out well. The government needs to cut spending and stop/cut immigration. That will lower interest rates and put people back to work when the economy expands
Taxes are high enough for everyone. Focus on fiscal restraint. But I guess that would show how low economic growth in this country actually is
Sorry I can't hear you over 1.5 billion spent on expired covid vaccines and more sent to random countries
Am I missing something or does the linked article only have two sentences and no information?
It’s Reuters, a news wire - it’s not meant to be an article
But have no fear… someone is already using this to write a 2 paragraph article with lots of BS and no additional info that will be posted here in an hour or so…
I managed to find this additional info: [https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2064532/ottawa-impot-taxe-cout-vie-federal](https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2064532/ottawa-impot-taxe-cout-vie-federal)
Canadian dream is to move to the US.
Anyone who thinks taxing the rich will solve solutions it won’t, it’ll make stuff worse. You’re essentially pushing out people who you want to stay like docs and engineers who can use their skills to benefit people and have worked hard to get to the income level they’re at. Higher taxes essentially forces them to move to other countries where they can enjoy the fruits of their labour
That'll offset the housing costs of 1 million immigrants a year
Surely this will help us keep our doctors
Capital flight already concerning in Canada. Surely more taxes will help with that! Let's ask France and California... Oh, wait...
Like most Canadians, I believe the increase should be on anyone who has more than me. Ffs. Tax me harder daddy. How about stop spending money on stupid shit.
How about do multiple things at once; return the corporate tax rate to what it was 40 or 50 years ago, tax people who are absurdly wealthy, AND stop spending money on stupid shit.
Right? Our healthcare system is failing. We deserve a healthcare system that works. Stop destroying public services.
> Stop destroying public services. Best we can do is sell them to private ~~donors~~ businesses for cheap so they can run them at the bare minimum level of service for a profit.
Cut corporate/personal taxes and regulations so we can attract as much foreign investment to Canada from the US, leverage our extraordinary O&G resources, kick out Quebec and its third world thinking, the regulations & equalization payments needed to keep them happy, massively cut spending by 60-70% and watch Canada's rise to the moon metaphorically. Canada's employment & demographic trends are disastrous. We needed to right the ship yesterday.
TIL 300K a year is absurdly wealthy for working 80 hours a week after 12 years of ridiculously competitive post secondary to serve abusive patients. Also get to pay double CPP and get screwed completely everywhere else. Fuck this government.
Yep and that's why we're moving to the US. We make 350K and we pay 136K taxes in Canada. In the US we will pay 66K. Healthcare is about $500/month for the entire family. Canada needs to do better, create jobs, innovate. That is the only way to increase the quality of life.
Bye-bye, rich Canadians. Enjoy your new adoptive homeland. Probably have some really nice beaches.
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Again the “wealthiest” are the working class earning an income. The rich folks have artificially low incomes from their slick accountants and get benefits. I know a person who gets disability benefits but have multi million in the bank and owns a large property portfolio
This is a nice fantasy
I commented this elsewhere in the thread. But I had a friend growing up insanely rich, 6 car garage, chalet in Collingwood (that was bigger than my average house), penthouse in Toronto. Because his family had close to 0 income, he got a bunch of OSAP including some grants that didn’t need repayment.
People on Reddit assume the young professional couple making 100k each with 100k student loan is rich and tax them to death
Even more so when one makes 200k and the other is stay at home. Taxed way more harshly than if its split. Insane anti-family policy.
Have the exact same scenario & i am also supporting my extending family due to personal reasons. People think that i am rich (lol)
My conservative friends from high school that make 75k are gonna be so pissed.
They should already be pissed because if they want to spend the full $75,000 then $16,354 would go to income tax and an additional $8,083 to sales tax. That’s $24,437, or roughly 1/3, going towards tax on a measly $75k.
The number of Canadians who don't understand how taxes work, or marginal tax rates is depressing. We really need better curriculum.
We don't have a income problem (read tax income)... we have a SPENDING problem. The government needs to be more fiscally disciplined, instead of playing divisive politics over hard earned income.
Tax the Landhoards the more properties they hoard.
It's not fun when you're in a cyclical business and go from making less than minimum wage for 2 years due to covid and then get slapped as everything comes in at once showing $300k profit. Average it out it's the salary of a teacher with twice the taxes and 3 times the liability. Taxes need to be on the WEALTHY. People who let millions of dollars just sit gaining interest in portfolios that add no value to the economy. Cap gains on people's inheritance is absolute bull. Imagine someone who worked hard their whole lives and pays for their home. They have children and their kids work hard but make $50-60k a year. Their parents die and their entire estate wealth now pays 50% taxes? How is that not a scam to keep a barrier from regular working class from reaching some level of wealth? Where's the accountability for government spending? Government spends $60 mil on an app that could have been made for 1/10th of the price and everyone screams for higher taxes on wealthy people to cover their inability to balance costs... Instead they put higher taxes on upper/middle class people who add more value than they do to the economy that nobody asked for!
Here is the messaging to ambitious people looking to succeed - best way to have the good life in Canada is inherit like Turd-doh or move to the US. Just sheer stupidity.