GTasker

Yep - Jack Mintz and I are totally aligned on this: “So much for affordability. At the rate at which federal and provincial governments are spending and running up deficits these days, at some point politicians will raid our bank accounts. If the federal government has a majority — maybe after winning a snap spring election — it will be easier for it to hike taxes afterwards on unsuspecting voters... With surging, deficit-financed public spending, pressure will mount to raise, not lower, taxes. In just the past two weeks, the federal government, already carrying a forecast deficit of $78.3 billion, has introduced two new costly programs. The first is another Liberal social program — the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit — expected to cost $12 billion over six years. The second is the reinstatement of subsidies to purchase EVs — $2.3 billion over the next five years — and Canada Infrastructure Bank funding for EV-chargers ($1.5 billion). …As the federal debt grows, so will debt charges, already expected to reach $61 billion this coming year — more than the $58-billion Canada Health Transfer… How do whopping tax increases mesh with the affordability agenda? They don’t. What are the average family’s most important expenditures? …As you might have guessed by now, the biggest household expenditure is tax paid to governments. On average, income taxes are $23,681, almost 22 per cent of the $108,000 spent on average in 2023 on goods, services, taxes and government fees... If we really want to address affordability, tax cuts are the place to start. Many household budgets are already stretched. Higher taxes will only make it worse... In the past year, several governments have offered token tax cuts. The Carney government reduced the lowest marginal income tax rate from 15 to 14 per cent. Alberta cut its 10 per cent tax rate for people with taxable income less than $60,000 to eight per cent... What we haven’t seen so far is a focus on reducing the most harmful taxes in the economy, those that are holding back Canada’s growth. High marginal and average income tax rates discourage work and saving. Complex corporate income tax provisions and business subsidies favouring slow-growth industries like forestry and manufacturing come at the cost of keeping corporate taxes high on growth sectors like technology, finance and communications. If there is room to cut taxes, we should focus on reductions that would improve affordability while growing the economy. A sharp increase in the working benefit would encourage low-income Canadians to participate in the work force; expanding the GST credit, which is what the government decided to do, will have the opposite effect. Governments may soon find themselves in a box as deficits grow in a weak Canadian economy. If they raise taxes and make life more unaffordable, voters will show up at the ballot box and let them know about that.” financialpost.com/opinion/ja…