CTVnews.ca – Politics
September 14, 2017. Don Martin, Power Play Host
It’s time for the T4 taxpayers of the nation to rise up.
With professionals rolling out sob stories of proposed changes cramping their ability to hide taxes through incorporation, the most influential group remains silent on the sidelines.
I’m referring to the vast majority of us: Millions of Canadians trapped by a single T4 remuneration slip that invites the Canada Revenue Agency to inflict maximum damage on our take home pay.
Take off retirement savings and charitable donations and those of us simply filing income on a T4 form are left to stare at a modestly-reduced taxable bottom line which cannot be shrunk by any other means.
No deductions for using the family home for work after hours or weekends. Nothing for the car used to travel to work. No creative savings schemes. No way to carve off a big chunk of income for sharing with relatives in reduced tax brackets.
T4ers get to the bottom line of their tax form very quickly every spring and face the full slap of the CRA’s open palm.
But, for the cost of an incorporation, doctors, lawyers, farmers, hi-tech businesses and just ordinary smaller business owners can and increasingly do access legal measures to reduce the tax load on their six-figure salaries.
The government plan to close those phenomenally popular privileges has met a cacophony of fury from every affected professional association. And just wait for the roughly 50,000 incorporated farmers to react once the harvest is in.
But the T4 nation knows the Canadian taxation field is about as level as the Canadian Rockies and they’re fed up with zero per cent income growth eroded by rising taxation loads.
They don’t believe a doctor should be able to hide income by paying their kids to walk the dog.
They see no fairness in letting a lawyer shield savings in a lower business tax environment to buy that monster cottage when they retire.
That’s why the Liberals are smart to plug their ears and push ahead with closing the tax loopholes.
Let the Conservatives bleed their hearts out for the upper income class pocketing tax advantages. There are definitely small business votes swinging their way as a result.
But the Liberals have done the better electoral calculation. And they know there are a lot more votes to be won from the disadvantaged T4 nation.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/don-martin-blog/don-martin-liberals-smart-to-push-ahead-with-closing-the-tax-loopholes-1.3589819
Tags: featured, ideology, standard of living, tax
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