Anti-tax crusaders provide only half the picture
TheStar.com – Opinion/Editorials – The Fraser Institute’s annual report on taxes never considers what Canadians get in return for their money.
Aug. 29. 2016. Editorial
It’s like Christmas for Canada’s anti-tax crusaders. The Fraser Institute released its annual Canadian Consumer Tax Index last week, giving the gift of ammunition to those perennially convinced of government’s greed and bloat. < https://www.thestar.com/content/dam/thestar/opinion/editorials/2016/08/29/anti-tax-crusaders-provide-only-half-the-picture-editorial/fraser.jpg.size.custom.crop.1086×695.jpg >
So just how confiscatory has the state become, according to the think tank’s latest offering? The tax bill for the average Canadian family has increased by 1,939 per cent since 1961, the report claims. In fact, we now pay more in taxes than we do for food, clothing and shelter combined. What a scandal!
Well, perhaps less a scandal when you consider that that eye-popping number doesn’t account for inflation. Or that it deceptively includes corporate taxes, which are largely shouldered by richer Canadians. Or that, as a share of Canada’s economy, taxes are now at a low rarely seen over the last three decades. Or that the portion of income going to taxes has increased by only 7 per cent since 1961 – a half-century over which we got the Canada Pension Plan and medicare, among other aspects of the social safety net that many see as central to our national identity.
It’s this last point that matters most. Nowhere amid its anti-tax alarmism does the Fraser Institute consider what Canadians get in return for their money. Yet several studies grounded in more convincing math have shown that our most expensive public services yield exceptional value for money. A 2009 report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives found that middle-income Canadians enjoy public services, from education to health insurance to pensions, worth about $41,000 annually per family – or roughly 63 per cent of their income. Conversely, we have watched as decades of tax cuts have led to eroding public services, but also to rising inequality, persistent homelessness, traffic gridlock and crumbling schools.
Reasonable people can disagree about the size and role of government, about how much tax we are or ought to be collecting, but any analysis of taxes that doesn’t take into account the services they buy is disingenuous and misleading. The Fraser Institute’s annual litany does a public disservice by feeding into a false narrative that has come to dominate our politics: that any tax is a bad tax and any cut a free good.
Of course there’s waste and inefficiency in government that ought to be addressed. It’s hard to make the case for higher taxes when ministers are paying more than a thousand dollars for a day’s limo rides. But as we have seen in Toronto, waste-reduction and efficiency-finding are often insufficient to pay for the public investments required to confront the challenges we face. Taxes, as it is often said, are the price we pay for civilization. If they are on the rise – and it’s not at all clear that they are – we ought to consider what we get in return before deciding whether or not that’s a bad thing.
< https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2016/08/29/anti-tax-crusaders-provide-only-half-the-picture-editorial.html >
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Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
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