You are paying credit card bills, paying back education loans, mortgages, auto loan installment etc etc. Perhaps it’s at the local level that social and political trust can most easily be rebuilt. When a company has to pay in 5 months of equivalent pay, yes taxes in Canada are very high! And as a matter of fact, they should have been aborted in the first place.. Tell me again, how can they tell if unborn babies are going to be obese and/or mentally ill in order to keep them from being a burden on society by aborting them? No organization – private, public or in-between – is perfectly efficient. As our income rises, its marginal utility declines. This is kind of sad. Preoccupation with tax cutting and the size of government are diversions, a conjurer’s trick that has us looking in the wrong direction as our real problems just get worse and harder to fix. Thanks for presenting both sides of the argument Jim! Anyone with a condition that actually NEEDS medical care pays astronomical rates — if the person can get insurance at all. Unless a post is clearly marked “Sponsored”, however, products mentioned in editorial articles and reviews are based on the author’s subjective assessment of their value to readers, not compensation. Successive parliamentary budget officers have told us precisely this. Taxation in itself is needed, no argue there, but also no excuse for big government! For a snapshot of the economic consequences of endless tax cuts and reduced progressivity we need only look at the current controversies surrounding tax reform in Kansas and Ohio. Simply, if we were to tax all income at the same rate, as flat tax advocates would have it, we would be asking far greater sacrifice from those living pay cheque to pay cheque than those making millions—and we would also be setting tight limits on how much revenue we could hope to collect. Governments overspend and are completely inefficient. with lower taxes, what will we lose? About a year ago, my son Jordan, some friends and colleagues and I put together a book on taxes in Canada, Tax Is Not a Four-Letter Word. Because of efficiency arguments, access fairness and not least internal division of powers it is difficult to justify competing approaches to a single set of issues. Currently, Jim specializes in putting Financial Education programs into the workplace. . A country with much lower tax rates. I like our health care system, our roads, our river valley, my laptop and the internet. Providing people with free money to spend as they chose, coincidentally often on nasty habits. I don’t want to suggest that there was ever some golden time when we all just loved paying taxes, though in the past we were perhaps more likely to see taxes as an expression of our shared citizenship and mutual responsibility. | Project Life Mastery Motivation, How To Self Publish A Book On Amazon (STEP-BY-STEP TUTORIAL), How To Create A $10,000 Per Month Amazon Book Publishing Business, Top 10 Self-Help Books That Will Change Your Life, How To Start New Habits That Can Change Your Life, How To Come Up With A GREAT Brand Name For Your Business, THIS Is The Easiest Way To Make Money With Affiliate Marketing, From Broke To Financial Freedom | Money Motivation, I Stopped Having Orgasms For 65 Days… Here’s What Happened. That’s in part because, as discussed, for most of us — except for the very rich — the costs of tax cuts obliterate the gains. and then add in inflationary spending as well. I don’t go as far as saying taxation is theft, because it is part of the contract of living in the country and the government is the defacto property master, so whichever ideology you want to spin I do see the taxes as legitimate to a certain extent, but I also think that government spending needs to be more efficient. Now that Trudeau is in we are all doomed to pay more. . They wanted it, they got it and you shouldn’t have to help pay for any treatment they get due to those self-chosen disorders, right Alex? I am sick of the socialism that permeates through every federal and most of the provincial parliamentary policies. Wasteful or inappropriate spending fritters away not only public resources but also public trust. It’s no coincidence that Alberta, the only flat tax jurisdiction in Canada and one of the few in the world, has high levels of inequality and even with its booming economy struggles to balance its budget, having run six consecutive deficits. It is the job of government to create a place were jobs can flourish. Clearly a discussion of taxes does expose ideological differences in how we understand the role of government, how we define fairness, just how much inequality we are prepared to tolerate. at least you don’t pay taxes that most of us Americans do on wars and other knuckle head stuff that we shouldn’t be having to worry about. Just the taxes alone calculate to 7 months of staple cost! It is this discrimination against labour that helps perpetuate inefficiencies in the system and tips the balance of power toward capital. James, you do pay for wars and other things you probably wouldn’t like to pay for, but you’re not paying for it in the way that you think. You know how expensive drunks are to take care of also? When you add up everything that we do pay, then taxes are still quite high. It’s been said there are two certainties to life: death and taxes. Canada has a very low wage rate compared to the rest of the world. These are smart in that they do not negatively affect productivity, cannot be off-shored to tax havens, and provide a large base for needed revenue. it is not the job of government to create jobs. They can literally wave a wand and spend your money and wealth without physically taking a dime from you. Taxes will forever be debated especially when it comes to how the government uses the money. And in the end, we all benefit if we restore greater progressivity to our tax system. Yes we pay tax but for what reason? The numbers never add up. I guess I have gotten off topic, point is the benefits we Canadians enjoy because of the higher taxation are non existent. Why are we supporting a health care system that takes care of people that treat themselves like shit? Not to say that tourists are the ones paying for that – but overall, higher taxes for a better quality of life. If you don’t believe me, check out my article on marginal tax vs average tax. One way or another, you’re going to have to pay for these services. I would say in Canada we may technically have a marginal income tax system but, pardon the pun, only marginally. Taxes provide a counter-balance, by softening extreme disparities in wealth, power and benefits. But I do know that when we Americans point at Canadian taxes as an example of the horrors we can expect from 2. more govt. There’s no question that we pay some hefty tax rates in Canada but the report is a little of what I call data spin. I am also sick of the debt, the soul crushing 10s of thousands of dollars in federal and provincial debt I was born into is pretty damn depressing honestly, I just hope my generation can be sensible enough to at the very very least not steal from their kids, doubtful. New programs? © Drake Media Inc. – All rights reserved. When you factor in total taxes (sales taxes income taxes environmental fees etc etc) your average family loses roughly 44% of their income, so after that and living expenses there is barely anything left to put extra down on the mortgage. Please pardon me if I come across to strong but the stuff you have mentioned above, you are paying for additionally! So we should not be surprised that the governments which for years promised painless – consequence-free – tax relief, now tell us that our most basic programs are unsustainable, that we have no alternative but to cut or privatize services and forego investments. Concern about austerity, inequality and their impact on social solidarity, democracy and even the economy is no longer solely coming from the left. What are your thoughts on taxes in Canada? A Press release by Fraser Institute showed the total tax bill of the average Canadian family has increased by 1,624 per cent since 1961, while expenditures on housing increased by 1,198 per cent, food by 559 per cent and clothing by 526 per cent from 1961 to 2009. tax dollars should be a closed economic system. You don’t need to apply for a visa to buy stock in the US. However even still we are being crushed by taxes, looking at buying property is just insane. And extreme inequality eventually undermines equality of opportunity as the wealthiest pass on their privilege and the poor their disadvantage. For more information you can follow him on Twitter @JimYih or visit his website, Retire Happy. The 2014 federal budget figures projected spending and tax as a percentage of the economy to hit lows not seen for seventy years. And a minority, the Fraser Institute and a few like it, attack all and any taxes, whatever their level and whatever the benefits, as an unfair burden and a constraint to our freedom. Yes, there is waste and significant room for efficiency, but this almost always represents a smaller portion of the total budget than most of us assume or are deliberately led to believe. You're able to contribute to an RRSP. Nonetheless, our anger—and the extensive media coverage these incidents produce—lead us to exaggerate the extent of the waste. “Obese people should have to pay for medical expenses themselves, so should anyone with mental illness.”. Across all ideologies the tax discussion triggers widespread anger with government, almost universal perceptions of rampant waste and inefficiency, and a growing skepticism about the competency and capacity of government to tackle the big issues or even to deliver on its promises. “tax-and-spend” policies, we don’t take into consideration the fact that health insurance premiums actually are a form of taxation. We are right to be outraged at some of the excesses of government and to demand better. Secondly tax freedom day is no way whatsoever to look at “lowered taxes”. Of course tax cuts have consequences: in a word, austerity. Ralph Klein is the closest I’ve seen to a man who understood how to run the show. Why isn’t it much easier for me, as a Canadian, to work in the US or elsewhere, and vice-versa? Recent Ekos research found that many Canadians are losing trust in the future, in the idea of progress, in our ability to tackle our big challenges, climate change, inequality, aboriginal justice, eroding democracy. If everyone had to calculate their income tax to the hourly rate they receive, you will begin to notice just how long throughout the year you worked for the government, 2 to 5 months out of 12 on average!