Saturn

I think that whenever you have a government in place for too long you are guaranteed to run into problems (of corruption, incompetence and complacency) eventually. The fact that Alberta hasn't changed its government for so long and that Ralph was more or less a king probably means that the conservatives didn't do quite as good as they could have. It seems to me that Alberta could be getting a lot more money for its resources than it currently is - it's not like the oil companies have anywhere else to go.

What is the interest rate on the federal debt? What is the interest rate on your mortgage? Which debt should be paid off first?The implication is that the government should cut taxes and return money to Canadians before it pays down the federal debt. (I would go further and argue that it should never pay off the debt ever and possibly even increase the debt.) You seem to imply that you have experience with accounting but judging by your post above, I wonder whether your claim is true.The Internet is a curious place. Anybody can claim to be anything and so most self-serving claims are ignored. Instead, you are forced to defend your ideas without the benefit of your reputation in the real world. By and large, if you are right, you will be able to convince other posters. The interest on the federal debt and on your mortgage would be surprisingly similar (unless you have some horrible credit rating). Second, not everyone has a mortgage and having one and the size of it are a personal choice. Taxes are not meant to redistribute income from people who own their homes to those who don't. I don't have any debt because I keep my financial affairs in order and I don't think that I should be paying for others' excessive mortgages. You are always entitled to your opinion and are right to question what you see on the internet. In that case I would recommend a good entry level accounting textbook.

ROTFL. Do you actually have kids? Have you ever had to deal with 'childhood educators' that work in the schools? Individual kids are nothing to them - they just faces in a crowd that disappear after a year. No amount of knowledge can replace an caregiver than actually cares about the individual child. You can care a lot about your car but you may not be more capable to fix it than a qualified mechanic. You may care a lot about your kids, but you still have to take them to the doctor when they are sick because the doctor has knowledge you don't. You may care about filing your income taxes but if you want it done right, you'd probably take it to your accountant. Caring is important but being actually capable to do it right is important too (or even more important). On top of that, given the number of abused and neglected children out there, I wouldn't say that all parents necessarily care enough. And yes, I went to daycare for full 4 years and from what I can recall I actually enjoyed it a lot. I couldn't wait to go there in the morning to play with my friends.

Those definitions only apply to income taxes. The GST is not an income tax therefore those definitions do not apply. How many years have you spend working in the accounting field? Clearly none. You are arguing with someone who has considerable experience with taxes. I don't think that we are on an even footing here. So I guess I have to leave it at this. But since you seem to be interested in this topic, here is a short and nice introduction to taxes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxes

Sounds like I won't benefit much then during the bulk of my working years. That is a hell of a lot of money lost in tax. I think I might prefer a general income tax cut instead of splitting. I think it would be better for me, better for the government. I agree. But I think that will be even better if the money goes to pay down the debt. The biggest expense for the federal government right now is interest on the debt. Close to 15 cents for every dollar in taxes we pay goes to pay the interest on that damned debt. I'd rather pay it off sooner and pay less in interest. Just like I'd rather pay off my mortgage sooner - the longer you drag it the more you help the banks.

Man, you are amazingly creative when it comes to manipulating taxation statistics. Consumption taxes apply to the price of goods and have no relationship with a person's income. You obviously don't know much about taxation. To determine whether a tax is progressive, flat, or regressive, you must compare the tax $$ to income BY DEFINITION. Here is the definition of flat tax. http://www.investorwords.com/2004/flat_tax.html

Which is a wonderful way to address the daycare problem. Seems to me that the best daycare is care provided by a child's parents. If the gov't incroduces policies that make staying at home economically feasible for for couples then the kids win. If kids win, society wins. I disagree. From what I've read, it is not at all clear that it is better for kids to stay home. In fact, kids who go to daycare appear to have better problem-solving, language, and social skills but this varies a lot with the quality of daycare. In any case, there is no evidence that staying at home to care for your kids is good for them. It may be good for you if you feel uncomfortable letting them go to daycare but that's your problem, not their problem and eventually you have to learn to let go. What your solution to the daycare problem will create though, is another problem called labour shortage, which Canada is already facing in many areas and will only get worse as the babyboom generation retires. You see, we could all stay home and grow our own food and make our own cars and treat our own health (the way things were 200 years ago) but that wouldn't be much of an economy. What is important for economic efficiency is specialization. In other words, it's best if doctors treat, farmers grow food, mechanics fix cars, and early childhood educators take care of kids. So your solution = kids may or may not win. Labour shortage = society loses.

Hong Kong is about to initiate a GST. Statistics Canada doesn't really confirm your assertion that there is a mass of people leaving Canada over taxes. A GST is a flat tax, the rate is the same for everyone. GST is a regressive tax, not a flat tax. A flat tax means that the rate you pay stays the same as your income increases. People with higher incomes spend less on the GST as a percentage of their incomes than people with lower incomes. Therefore, the GST rate goes down as income increases. So, flat tax = tax rate stays the same as income increases. GST = tax rate goes down as income increases.

At the moment, my wife and I have an unequal income. It will probably be more even by time this new financial arrangement comes to the fore. Probably won't help me all that much but maybe later in life when one of us retires earlier than the other. Still, I am concerned that this is a costly promise to make. Has anyone costed it out? They are saying $5 billion per year but that doesn't include any changes in people's behaviour. Obviously, such a change gives a significant incentive for a spouse to not work or to work less and even if a small percentage decide not to work or to work less as a result of this change, the cost can balloon very quickly. My estimate is $5-$10 billion during good economic times and $10-$15 billion during a recession (when the number of single income families increases significantly). You will not benefit from this change unless you and your spouse are in different tax brackets. For example, if you are both in the top tax bracket, you make 1 million and your spouse makes $200 thousand, you won't benefit. You have to be in different tax brackets to benefit. And the greater the difference, the more you benefit. The greatest winners here will be couples where one spouse does not work.

Because a stay at home spouse is not allowed to collect GST and other gov't benefits without reporting their total family income. IOW - the gov't has already decided that families must share their income. For that reason gov't should either use total family income as a way to calculate how much tax they pay or allow people to collect benefits as individuals. The current system discriminates against single income families. Allowing income splitting is not the perfect way to resolve this discrimination but it does help. The bottom line: you are wrong when you say the current system is baised in favour of single income families. This is total nonsense. One income couples already benefit from partial income splitting through the credits and benefits mentioned above. If no income splitting works for you, I don't mind it a bit. You'd lose the current tax breaks you have because your spouse doesn't work. I told you that the current system does NOT discriminate against single income couples. At every level of income, you would pay more taxes as an individual (with a spouse who works or without a spouse) than as an individual with a spouse who doesn't work. If it pleases you to file your taxes separately from your spouse, you can always do it. You just claim that you had a breakdown in the relationship for a week or longer during the year and you can file separately. It's that easy because nobody in their right mind would file taxes separately and lose tax breaks for filing taxes together.

You logic is flawed. Bill and Jane have a total income of 70K. Tom and his wife have a total income of 35K. Two people making twice as much income should pay more income tax. That is common sense. To make your comparison valid you have to compare two families with the same total income. In your example, you would have to assume that Tom worked extra overtime and boosted his income to 70K if you want to compare his taxes to Bill and Jane. In that situtation, Tom would have a much higher tax bill. That is why the current system is unfair to couples that would rather choose to have one spouse work more so the other can stay at home. My logic is not flawed. Individuals are the units of society, all laws apply to individuals and all work is provided by workers, ie individuals, not by couples. A couple is an arbitrary unit that you choose to define as the basic unit to use in taxation because that is more beneficial to you than any other unit. But why a couple? Why not the whole family, kids included. Why not the whole household or individuals living in the same home? Why not everyone in the neighbourhood? Or the city? If you define couples as the basic unit of society, so that they can share income, how about couples sharing jail sentences? How about university degrees? If you can get half of your spouse's income, why not get half of your spouses jail sentence? Or half of your spouse's traffic ticket? Or half of your spouse's university degree? Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Well, sharing income is just as ridiculous. Your spouse doesn't share your work, so why would s/he share your income for tax purposes?

And then the wife dies in a car accident. The husband's taxes triple as a result. Explain to the guy why you are punishing him tripling his taxes on top of the fact that he just lost his partner and the mother of his kids.

You have it backwards. The gov't does not want a stay-at-home spouse of someone making 100K/year collecting benefits intended to help the truely poor. The rules are designed to ensure the gov't pays benefits to fewer benefits. IOW - people would qualify for more benefits if the lived together but were not married or common law. This is a minor benefit that only has an effect if the couples stay together until retirement. This statement is complely false. A couple with one person making 60K will pay $3000 _more_ in tax per year than a couple where each person makes 30K. Yet both families will qualify for exactly the same benefits because thier family income is 60K. Where do you get this bizarre idea that the system currently gives preferential tax treatment to one income families? Couples don't work. Individuals do. Your employer will not pay you more because you have a spouse who doesn't work. Your employer will pay you for YOUR work. Because your work is the same whether you are married or not and whether your spouse works or not. If you can't expect your employer to give you extra benefits because your have a spouse who doesn't work, you can't expect the government to reward you for having a non-working spouse either. You can't treat couples with one worker the same way as couples with two workers for the obvious reason that the second type of couple WORKS TWICE AS MUCH AS (or at least more than) the first couple. Salaries are paid in exchange for WORK, not for sitting at home. The current system gives preferential treatment to one income families because 2-income families provide twice the work but pay more than twice the taxes. For example: Tom, Bill and Jane are work the same jobs at company A and receive $35K each on a 40hr workweek. Bill and Jane are married and pay $4,000 in taxes each. Tom has a spouse who does not work and Tom gets the spousal tax credit worth $1800, so Tom's family pays $2,200 in taxes. Bill and Jane pay $8,000 in taxes. $8,000=$2,200x3.6. So Bill and Jane provide 2 times the work, earn 2 times the income, and pay 3.6 times the taxes. The current system is punishing them for working more.

The point is the clawbacks are based on _family_ income. If the gov't insists on using family income for calculating benefits then it should use family income for calculating income tax payable. The technically fairest way to do this would require spouses to pool their income and pay tax as if they are a single person. However, such a move is a political non-starter so the gov't is talking about leveling the playing field by allowing income splitting. The government doesn't insist on calculating benefits on family income - the government is losing money by doing it this way, so it's not exactly a benefit for the gov't. The reason it's done this way is to give poor families a tax break and help them make ends meet. Since families with 1 income earner are more likely to fall into this "poor" category, they are also more likely to benefit from benefits. This is a form of income-splitting already. There are also numerous tax credits that allow for income-splitting in the current system - such as the spousal and age amounts. Spousal RRSPs are designed specifically for income-splitting. One-income couples already receive a preferential tax treatment compared to two-income couples in the current system. Going any further that this makes no sense. It is neither fair, nor is it beneficial for our economy. In other words it's a lose-lose situation for Canada.

Don't worry, Harper isn't done yet. The next step will be to spend whatever is left of the surplus (or possibly more) in Quebec. The election is quick approaching, so this next step in buying votes in Quebec is coming soon.

The system already discriminates against families with stay at home parents in numerous ways (child tax benefit, GST credit, childcare deductions). This change would address that discrimination. The current system discriminates against working parents, not stay-at-home parents. The child tax benefit and the GST credit are both based on family income. The clawbacks on both are very sharp. Only families with a stay-at-home parent can possibly benefit from those. The universal child benefit is taxed at the lower-income spouse's level. This obviously greatly favours families with a stay-at-home parent. This change will only make the discrimination against families without a stay-at-home parent even worse.

Income-splitting is nothing but vote-buying. It discriminates against single people. It discriminates against married people both of whom work. Why should I pay more taxes than somebody who receives the same pay for the same work just because my spouse works and his spouse chooses not to work? It creates disincentives to work by rewarding people who don't work. Disincentives to work are the last thing our economy needs. Unemployment is at the lowest levels in 30 years and the labour shortage will only worsen as the babyboom generation retires. You can't give people incentives not to work when you are facing labour shortages. Canada's economy is an open one and don't expect wages to go up and pull people back to the labour market. Unfilled jobs will simply leak out of the contry instead. Finally, it is supposed to cost only $5 billion/year. Guess what? That doesn't include tax revenue lost due to behavioural changes. Even if a small number of people decide not to work or to work less as a result of this ill-conceived policy, the cost will balloon significanly. Furthermore, you cannot give away $5 billion in revenue to special, yet large interest groups, when you are paying upwards of $20 billion per year in interest on your huge debt. In this situation, tax cuts are nothing but a tax deferral+large interest cost.