“will help small businesses and the manufacturing sector keep pace withthe rising Canadian dollar”

WE WISH!!!!

We never learn from history,

A $1.05 US Dollar will devastate all Provinces East of the “Oil producers”

Back to being hewers of wood and drawers of water - not much EI there!

Here’s my reason for supporting another 1% tax cut to the GST: it will be very difficult for a futre government (the Liberals?) to rasie the GST rate, once the Conservatives’ tax cut is legislated.

Suppose the Liberals under Stephane Dion get back in power. And he raises the GST rate back to 7%. Such a tax rise will be very visible to all Canadians. But a future Liberal government could easily raise personal income taxes trhough many “hidden” means, such as partiall or totallly de-indexing the PIT tax system (as was done under the Mulroney government).

So I think the GST tax cuts are a wonderful once-and-for-all tax cut — a tax cut that will not easily be reversed.

David Murrell
Department of Economics, UNB
WatchDog Newsletter
dmurrell@unb.ca

The Tories should at least be congratulated for keeping their promises regarding the GST. Remember Liberal Sheila from Hamilton?

But he still screwed a lot of folks with the income trust reversal which broke a campaign promise. If he had grandfathered income trusts it would have cost the government a little more but the equity value of pensions was severely impacted. I for one will not forget what he did to my RRSP. The next thing he should do as well is to shield personal savings from the ravages of inflation by setting up the registered savings plan where people can put their after-tax dollars to be protected from the tax-man. Right now interest earned with after tax dollars is taxed at the highest marginal rate. Only interest in excess of inflation should be taxed something that Brian Mulroney took away from us in 1987 (the $1000 interest deduction). As for corporate taxes, they are pretty well a cosmetic measure. We do not want our corporations taxable when they re-invest their profits into more equipment and research, which will lead to further jobs. Taxing corporations is one of the biggest job killers a country can make. The corporate tax rate reduction is a PR gesture but it signals that the right attitude to business exists. Now if only the income tax fiasco could be fixed?

The NCC has sold out the conservative agenda in the interests of flattering power. Shame on the NCC.

Have you forgotten already the broken promise regarding income trusts? Ironically, the damage that has been caused to that sector of the economy is just coming to light.

The GST cut precluded significant personal income tax cuts. The Conservative Party distributed crumbs.

It’s great to see tax cuts no matter where they are. Remember whether it is Municipal, Provincial or Federal the government spending all comes out of our pockets. I would like to have seen a modest reduction in all brackets. The NDP actually touts that high income people pay little tax. Over 80% of all tax comes from 20% of the people. The top tax brackets are so high that there is very little incentive to save. In fact many seniors I know have all their OAS, Age credit and most if not all of their Medical expense clawed back. In Ontario they also get hit with a very high Medical tax. For younger high income people all of their Family allowance is clawed back. Thank God we have some high income people in Canada or the low income people would be paying triple the tax they now pay.

Any and all tax reductions are welcome however Harper’s Govt. never addressed the fact that his govt. had increased in numbers and there is still a lot of waste in government nor the fact that public employees enjoy a higher level of salaries/wages and benefits then the average tax payer.

We need a meaningful income tax reduction, less govt., less govt waste.
Harper’s govt. gave us a very modest reduction in taxes but he and his govt. voted themselves a huge increase in salaries and benefits a short time ago. Where is the justice???

Why not tell the truth about how to reduce our taxes the most for years to come? The government is taxing every person and profitable corporation in Canada nearly $1000 per year per person ($30.000,000,000) to pay the interest on our bond debt. Debt creaated 30 years ago by previous government ministaers and deputy-ministers flpipant about how tax monsy was spent.
The saving in a 1% GST reduction is small or negligbeile by comparason for most people.
For every $10 billion reduction in the debt, the interest payment the next year and every year everafter is cut by nearly $! billiono which could be used to reduce taxes.

It is nice to see a government that tries to keep its promises, instead of the liberals saying that they would do away with Mulroney’s GST and subsequently happily kept it so that they could buy more votes with out own money. That worked for awhile, but as usual power corrupts and did it ever.
Now the same liberals under their new leader critizizes the conservatives for keeping their promise.!!!!
A bigger income tax cut would have been better from an economic point of view, but politically would not have earned as many “browny points”
Marco T

N ow do something sensible about the income trust debacle of this same govt.!!!

That will not be soon forgotten.

A tax cut is a tax cut

I think the advantage to the GST reduction is it does help a lot of people that an income tax reduction wouldn’t. People on pensions who don’t make enough to pay income tax, but still get dinged 6% on everything they have to spend to live, young people starting out who are at the low end of the tax spectrum but need to buy a lot (home, furniture, car , diapers etc.).