BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!... sorry... couldn't. keep. straight. face...heeheehee...
Ok. I'm better now. Really.
Credit where credit is due: I'm impressed that Joe Flaherty and the Conservatives were capable of the hitherto unseen abillity to accept stark reality when it was rubbed in their face long enough, and enough intestinal fortitude to do what was necessary. And enough basic humanity, or at least political savvy, to reduce the impact of the neccesary steps on Canadian senior investors.
One last relevant thought from the Globe's Eric Reguly to consider as Corporate Canada's outraged stuffed suits bawl like branded calves:
Tax balance -- the relative proportion paid by corporations and individuals -- was already in trouble in Canada. The rising trust market threatened to kill it. The impression given by corporations, with their lobbyists and PR men and speechwriters, is they pay the lion's share of the taxes in this country, and that the tax burden is making them uncompetitive in the global market. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that corporations paid the equivalent of 60 per cent of all individual taxes collected in the early 1960s, according to national accounts. Since then, the figure has dropped to about 30 per cent. In other words, the relative tax burden on the individual has doubled, while on corporations it has been halved.
3 comments:
Thanks, Cliff.
Reguly's point needs to be made again and again, at least as often and at twice the volume of the Fraser Institute and their fellow-travellers' attempts to spin it the other way.
Likewise, another point I seldom see mentioned: How was it that when I went to high-school (the '60s) the public school system had enough money for library books, text books, team uniforms, wood and metal for shop class, art supplies, etcetera, (and even some field trips if I remember correctly), without having to, say, put Coke machines in the caf so the school could get a cut of the sales? How is it that today's public school system is strapped for cash, yet Coke is so flush it can afford to offer a share of its revenues to those same public schools?
Just another side-effect of business-friendly, citizen-hostile tax policy.
I don't remember my parents being beggered by school fees either...
I knew the numbers were up there, but I didn't know it had gotten that high.
And amen on school fees! Music, art, books, library fees, fees for after school programs, sports teams --- fees, fees, fees...and Coke machines in the hallways...
It's a sick world!
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