Stephen Harper will blow $43 billion this year on tax giveaways
PressProgress.ca – en/post
May 27, 2014. By PressProgress
The Conservative anti-tax brigade is spending $43 billion on tax giveaways this year, a
new report estimates.
A Parliamentary Budget Office report released Tuesday examined changes to Canada’s tax system between 2005 and 2013 for personal incomes taxes and the GST/HST. It found that the accumulation of cuts since 2005 will reduce federal personal income tax revenues this year by an estimated $17.1 billion and the federal share of the GST/HST revenue by $13.3 billion.
That doesn’t include an estimated loss of revenue of $12.6 billion each year due to deep corporate tax cuts since 2008. This is based on a PBO estimate that pegs the cost of each percentage point reduction in corporate taxes at $1.8 billion; there’s been a seven-pointreduction in corporate taxes under Harper’s Conservatives.
To put this in perspective, “the cumulative fiscal impact of government-wide” program cuts since 2009-10 is projected to be $12.5 billion this year, the PBO report states.
(The PBO does not include information on revenue losses attributed to corporate tax cuts in its latest report because of “data limitations”; measuring their impact in the same way they did for personal income tax and GST changes requires access to micro corporate tax data, which they did not have access to.)
To put the findings another way, the Harper government, by starving the public coffers, is losing $43 billion that could be used to boost investments in axed services, build needed national programs, as well as balance the budget and pay down debt.
And there would even be enough left over to give every little boy and girl their own pony!
Not getting much in return for those tax cuts…
Despite Conservative claims that tax cuts spur job creation and put money back into the pockets of consumers, there’s very little supporting evidence to back up this claim.
Finance Canada’s own data suggests every $1 billion spent on corporate tax cuts generates a measly 3,310 jobs. Not very effective.
And the PBO’s report indicates that median income taxpayers with kids (averaging between $42,450 and $56,505) would see between 2.8% to 2.9% increase in their after-tax income. But those tax savings can be quickly eaten up by increased costs that would otherwise be covered through public programs.
For example, tax credits for children cost Canadians $2.74 billion. But a month or two of childcare in Ontario is equal to the total after-tax savings from these tax credits, while an affordable national childcare program would cost less to implement — and saves families thousands of dollars.
Here’s a list* showing what else we could do with $43 billion in this lost revenue:
Balance the budget:
Cost: $2.9 billion
Pay down debt:
Cost: $10 billion
Urban infrastructure and public transit:
Cost: $9.5 billion
National childcare program:
Cost: $2 billion
National pharmacare program:
Cost: $3.8 billion
Reduce university tuition to 1992 levels:
Cost: $3 billion
Invest in affordable housing:
Cost: $1.5 billion
Invest in First Nation’s communities, water supply and education:
Cost: $2.2 billion
Invest in long-term health care for seniors:
Cost: $5.6 billion
Buy every Canadian kid under the age of 9 a Welsh pony:
Cost: 2.5 billion
GRAND TOTAL: $43 billion
Not only does that help build a stronger and healthier society, it creates jobs and puts money back in people’s pockets.
*Numbers based in part on 2015 estimates from CCPA’s Alternative Federal Budget (except the pony part).
< http://www.pressprogress.ca/en/post/stephen-harper-will-blow-43-billion-year-tax-giveaways >
Tags: budget, economy, featured, ideology, privatization, standard of living, tax
This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2014 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Governance Debates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
58 Responses to “Stephen Harper will blow $43 billion this year on tax giveaways”
Leave a Reply
Recent Comments
Thank you for sharing this very good post. Very interesting ideas! (as always, btw)
Our communities really need to deal with this.
Good day! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and say I really enjoy reading through your articles. Can you recommend any other blogs/websites/forums that cover the same subjects? Thanks a lot!
whoah this weblog is wonderful i like reading your articles. Keep up the good paintings! You already know, many people are looking around for this information, you can help them greatly.
I have been surfing online more than three hours today, yet I never found anything that grabbed my interest as much as this piece.
Hi there! I just wanted to ask if you ever have any trouble with hackers? My last blog (wordpress) was hacked and I ended up losing several weeks of hard work due to no back up. Do you have any solutions to protect against hackers?
Hi my family member! I want to say that this article is amazing, great written and include approximately all important infos. I’d like to see more posts like this .
bonjour I love Your Blog can not say I come here often but im liking what i c so far….
A neighbor of mine encouraged me to take a look at your blog site couple weeks ago, given that we both love similar stuff and I will need to say I am quite impressed.
I like your blog. It sounds every informative.
Have you given any kind of thought at all with converting your current web-site into French? I know a couple of of translaters here that will would certainly help you do it for no cost if you want to get in touch with me personally.
fantastic post, very informative. I wonder why more of the ther experts in the field do not break it down like this. You should continue your writing. I am confident, you have a great readers’ base already!
You are my inhalation , I possess few web logs and very sporadically run out from to brand 🙁
I dont think I’ve read anything like this before. So good to find somebody with some original thoughts on this subject. cheers for starting this up. This blog is something that is needed on the web, someone with a little originality.
I like this weblog very much so much great info .
This is the wave – the big wave.
Abnormal this put up is totaly unrelated to what I was searching google for, but it surely used to be listed at the first page. I suppose your doing one thing proper if Google likes you adequate to place you at the first page of a non similar search.
Tips and tools you offer are so helpful to agencies in our community.