Title: Message
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Mulroney's bad idea |
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You
thought you hated Brian Mulroney's 7 per cent GST. Well, try this one on
for size: a 34 per cent GST.
That's the prescription the former prime minister is now flogging
for improving your economic well-being.
Mulroney, who commands $40,000 for giving a speech, wants to
eliminate the personal income tax and shift the entire burden to
consumption taxes. (Since Ottawa collects more than three times as much
from personal income taxes than from the GST, the rate on Canada's
consumption tax would have to rise to about 34 per cent to produce as much
revenue as the two taxes currently do.)
"We should not be taxing effort," Mulroney says.
That's another way of saying we should not be taxing savings, which
is the income you do not spend.
Rich people, like Mulroney himself, tend to save a lot more money
than Canadians of ordinary means. And those who can save the most have the
most to invest.
So, according to Mulroney's logic, people who invest the most are
making the most effort.
Tell that to someone who puts in 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year
to earn the same amount of money as the former PM takes in giving an
afternoon talk.
That's the kind of person onto whom Mulroney would shift some of
his taxes by imposing a 34 per cent GST.
But that's not all Mulroney would do. He would lower corporate
income taxes, too.
With less revenue from the corporate sector, how would Ottawa pay
for health care, ease the plight of the homeless, or eliminate child
poverty, as Mulroney once promised to do?
You guessed it. By raising the GST to even more than 34 per cent.
We suspect that it takes a lot more gall than effort to come up
with ideas as regressive as these. If there is not a tax on chutzpah,
there certainly ought to be.
One final note on why we have to pay more in taxes than Mulroney
might like.
In his time in office, he doubled the national debt. Somebody has
to pay the interest on that. |
THE END
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