The power of taxes

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives:

The Case for Investing in Canadians

Corporate tax cuts provide a dramatic illustration of the cost of tax phobia.

Canada is currently collecting $12 billion less in corporate taxes each year than it did in 2000. That’s about $400 per Canadian that corporations no longer contribute to the public good. This number will keep rising as more promised corporate tax cuts take effect and tax loopholes are ignored.

Corporate tax cuts were supposed to encourage corporations to invest in Canada’s future, but the opposite has happened: companies have been investing less in the machinery and processes that generate employment, while corporate profits have risen dramatically.

It’s the same story with individual tax cuts. Personal income tax cuts have become the apple pie of political promises to middle-income families, but it’s a tiny minority of rich Canadians who benefit most. For instance, more than half the benefit from capital gains tax cuts since 2000 goes to Canada’s richest 1%.

These tax gifts provide a boost to BMW dealerships, yacht clubs and granite countertop manufacturers, but more Canadians are required to carry the cost of dangerously long wait times in emergency rooms, crushing debt loads for university graduates, boil water alerts, collapsing overpasses, and tainted food scares.

Is this the kind of Canada we want?

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