Canadian Politics

It’s March and tax time is here again. Don’t you just hate tax time! I know that used properly taxes are beneficial. For all it’s flaws we have a a health care system that everyone can access with out losing your home. We also benefit from having a fire and police service, food inspection, water, sewage treatment waste removal and so on.

The real problem is that the tax system is unfair. First of all if you check with any tax accountant you will find that there are volumes of tax codes. If we were audited there would likely be errors in many of our returns. Even if we pay to have our returns done we are responsible for the return not the person who prepared it.

I think we should scrap the system and start over for example we could have:

• No personal income tax on the first $35,000 income meaning that you pay no tax on income up to $35,000 gross income. This might be to low because it would mean that you scrap all the deductions that cause so many head aches. We already have a child benefit that could be adjusted or revised to address the issue of children in lower income families.

• Next level would be from $35,001 to $100,000 would be at 15%, $100,001 to $250, 000 20% everything above $250,001 25%.

• For people who have a home based business set up a simple system that would allow the deduction of expenses but only up to the income achieved.

• Revise the way that small businesses are taxed so that they can prosper.

• Review the corporate tax system to insure that they are paying their fair share and implement a system that the taxes owed are paid. There are large corporations that owe the Government millions in unpaid taxes.

You could still have the RRSP program although that may depend on your income. It might be better to put money into a tax free account.

Wouldn’t be nice if you could do your income tax on one page? Earned $40,000 minus $35.000 equals $5000 times 15% equals $750.00 owed DONE! Send a check.

Since most of us make less than $100,000 won’t there be a shortage of money to deliver the Government programs? Well in order to be a fair tax system corporations should contribute a fair amount. Right now corporations are taxed at 15% of net earnings meaning that if a company doesn’t have any earnings they don’t pay anything. Individual tax payers, that means you and me, carry 70% of the tax burden at all levels of Government.

Instead of making things simpler MP’s seem to go out of their way to make things more difficult by adding more stuff to the tax code that we won’t know about. Chances there are deductions that we could use but don’t know about.

I people will think what I have just suggested is unworkable and maybe it is and thats ok if I get people thinking outside the box and start pushing the MP’s to do something positive on tax rates.