Taxes Poll?

Did Jerry Jay hack the matrix or something? There are not too many "polite marxists" out in Alberta, which has no sales tax in addition to the lowest overall tax rate in the country. Give Alberta a try. It's not bad at all. <br />
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I think it's important to distinguish between "business" and "entrepreneurship". Our tax structure is geared towards generating entrepreneurs. If you are a wage slave employee, then the tax breaks you'd get as an entrepreneur are there to give you an incentive to start a business. <br />
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It's also important to consider "mandated services" when comparing tax rates in ,say,Canada, Sweden and the US. In the US, taxes are lower, but their federal government eats up a greater portion of the budget than in Canada, which is more decentralized. You might have lower income taxes, but would have to buy services such as healthcare from the private sector, which might be more expensive. In order to buy the same level of services in the US as are provided by the government in Canada, you might not be better off at all. I'll look for the article, but the Economist magazine showed that, when examining mandated services, the US differed from Sweden by only 2.5%<br />
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Furthermore, something else to consider. If you moved to the US, where would you move? New York? California? According to the link below (which may or may not add to the arguement) most Canadians would move there. They are the highest taxed states in the Union, interestingly.<br />
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<a href="http://www3.sympatico.ca/dylan.reid/ustaxes.html">http://www3.sympatico.ca/dylan.reid/ustaxes.html</a><br />
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The guy has a point in saying that Canadians do not move South for lower taxes, but for higher salaries. Canadian firms pay low wages to their salaried employees and in turn, do not attract the best talent. It could be that publicly subsidized education creates a surplus of skilled workers, which drives the price of their labor down. In the US,education is more of a luxury than in Canada, so Canadians who move south are engaging in "arbitrage" moving a product (their degree) from a low-demand jurisdiction to a high-demand one. <br />

The poster is ignoring the facts. Canada already has a low tax rate as compared to every other industrialized nation. When it comes to comparing median tax rates between us and our closest trading partner - we pay far less - especially once one considers they also pay thousands more every year for health care.

Corporate tax rates - Canada's is far lower than the U.S. already. It is far lower than the vast majority of Europe as well.

This poster is just repeating what they heard in the media without knowing the facts. This becomes crystal clear with their bizarre last statement. Somehow is you have a fair tax rate, a strong social system, you MUST be Marxist. Shallow thinking if I have ever encountered it.

Interesting. Yeah I'd say our tax environment is pretty good, except the GST still chafes me.

No matter what people think of Paul Martin, he did do a decent job getting the books in order. Yeah it hurt the CHST and other programs, but it had to be done.

Nothing in life is free. The cheap labour crowd always goes on about taxcuts, but they ignore they still pay for the services. Garbage collection for example. Many places it is done by the city, paid for by your tax dollars. Others, you pay for it, and I mean PAY for it. this crowd wants it back to 1910 where some have all the opportunities, and most don't. Why do I say that? Look at what they are pushing. Collectively, and done publicly, delivery of services almost always comes cheaper - health care being the best example. yet, they want that torn down so its all user pay, and private companies, outside the control of citizen at large, can charge what they want to maximize profits.

Don't fall for the old - we pay too much taxes line.

Half of our wages are confiscated by the government and considering what we recieve in return, it is a lousy investment.

Average family income in Canada is about $58,000 and after income tax, property tax, provincial & federal sales tax, tax on taxes, excise taxes, surtaxes, sin taxes, etc. AND exorbitant fees for any services required by law like marriage licences etc. etc. -- the average family has about $29,000 left to pay the mortgage, buy food, transport, invest in retirement funds, clothe the kids etc. etc. etc....

We're not getting good services for that $29,000 so taxes are obviously too high in Canada!

Er, getting married is not required by law, thus marriage licence fees are not required by law either.

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Canadians are asking, why do americans hate us? They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to disagree with each other.

Get real. People get married. We should all stay at home and eat porridge in order to avoid taxes/fees on what we do socially? Maybe in a Communist country, but fortunately we're not there yet.

The facts are that SOME people are severely overtaxed-namely the poor. While others aren't nearly taxed enough. I think people who buy hummers and home entertainment systems over 10 grand should be higher taxed just based on their selfishness. We earn about 80 grand a year, and even we could afford more taxes. But I'll be damned if I'll pay more so that we can pay investors because we stopped borrowing from the Bank of Canada.

Excuse me but the article referred to above did not compare the US and Canada with all of these other taxes you mention; it was federal income tax only. If you have an article that compares all of these, please offer it up for review by us. Also, some of the taxes you mention, particularly the sin taxes, are entirely voluntary and moreover go to offset some of the costs to the rest of us incurred by the people indulging in them so I have absolutely no sympathy for people who whine about this.

Also, instead of falsely complaining about high taxes why don't you start complaining about the most important point this article brings out; namely the gross discrepancy in salaries offered by business in the two countries. I can remember when taking a computer networking course people talking about friends they knew going to the US and getting entry level jobs for a database administrator for well over $50,000 US while in Canada they were paying $30,000 CAD tops.

I sometimes think that Canadian business executives don't know what they are asking for when the keep pushing for Canada to align its tax structure, healthcare, etc. to the American system. The extra burden they would have to carry in healthcare alone (which they would have to carry to attract workers and keep them) would bankrupt them, as American companies are easily paying $10,000 US per employee. I truly don't think Canadian businessmen know how good they have it here and just read media reports and believe them out of hand.

My wife works in scientific research and has seen many of her 'underlings' go to the states and earn much more than they ever could here. Fortunately, her boss, a professor, hooked up with americans to start the venture so it's really an american company. We are hoarding money partly because she knows that she will never make nearly as much anywhere else in Canada (and we don't want to stay in southern ontario). While the company is very generous and throws money around, her canadian boss still has that canadian miserliness and offers new scientists very meagre pay to start, the result is that the staff for a long time was almost completely chinese but many of them have left for the states. People tend to forget that canadian industry often (usually?) is no kinder than anywhere else, and often less so (many people still equate sovereignty with canadian ownership)

I agree with paying more taxes. If I had a modicum of assurance that the government was using my taxes to correct market breakdowns (like inequity of wages) then I would be proud to pay more taxes. I would propose that we consider a maximum income tax. When earnings from all sources (no deductions) exceed $250K the remainder is taxed at 100%

Canadians move to the States because our gov't confiscates so much of our money, and because the gov't confiscates money from Canadian businesses that actually make money - those businesses can't afford to pay higher wages. This is no big secret - less taxes and less gov't interference in the economy leads to more jobs with better pay.

Yeah, sure buddy....
GLOBE AND MAIL
Eight increases in the past nine quarters have boosted operating profits to a record high of $47.4 billion, from $44.7 billion in the fourth quarter and $43.8 billion in the first quarter of 2003, the statistics agency said in a release.

Compared with 2003's first quarter, overall operating profits were up 8.1 per cent.



According to recent data collected by Statistics Canada, over $17 billion in corporate profits went untaxed in 1994, up from an average $15 billion in the 12 years from 1980 to 1992.

The data reveals that the number of profitable companies paying no income tax jumped from 66,000 in 1992 to 74,799 in 1993 and 81,462 in 1994

"Profits at 200 of the country's biggest companies hit a record $6.9 billion in the first quarter of this year, up 44% from the same period a year earlier."

The banks and other financial institutions led the way, with bank earnings soaring 12%, and profits for the financial sector as a whole climbing 25%.

opinions really are like...

Oh yes, we would all be better off if our businesses were unprofitable.... duh!