The Hook

Who Pays Taxes? Only you...

I know this will come as quite a shock to those who still think business pay taxes, or that governments create wealth.

All costs, ALL of them, are ultimately paid for by the taxpaying consumer. Businesses get the money to pay their taxes from selling stuff. Raise their taxes and guess what happens? You have to pay more for their stuff!

When governments spend money, guess where they get it? From taxes paid by individuals and businesses. Whether collected directly from taxing individuals, or indirectly from taxing business, there are handling costs involved.

By the way, if the government spends more than is collected in taxes, the difference has to be borrowed, and repaid later - with interest - from taxes ultimately paid by (fill in your name here).

Taxation: Fairness and Balance

I like John Horgan's idea of a "Fair Tax Commission." I have no problem paying taxes, so long as those funds are used wisely (e.g. on healthcare, education and public transportation). But when millions of taxpayer dollars get wasted on pipe dreams like the much ballyhooed (and now defunct) "hydrogen highway" with no real benefits for British Columbians, I get pretty upset.

Nobody should get subsidized.

Including the business community. No wonder we have the highest child poverty rates in the country, schools closing, poor transit, etc. etc.

The BC Liberals have given away our tax dollars to the business elite, they have subsidized their friends and screwed the average person.

Liebrals Gambling Expansion = Regressive Taxation

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2011/02/paternalism

IMO, it is also time to pop the question: what are the banks profit margins on home mortgages, on student loans, on small business loans? Is it not obscene that a homeowner buying say a $350,000 - $500,000 home over 30 years will end up paying in the ballpark of $1.5+ million with their mortgage- most of it interest; ditto the reasoning on student loans. Should not there be much more reasonable limits on the profit margin on bank/credit card loans of any type -thereby reducing corporate profits but decreasing consumer debt - thereby trending to a more just and equal society? Ought not there be more transparency on corporate costs & profits as well as high CEO salaries - information, if publicly available could be used to cap or place windfall profit tax on excessive profits and excessive CEO salaries! Twitter: JusticeNow_2288

No taxes on business has

No taxes on business has been a Fraser Inst. propaganda from the beginning, and one of the main reasons these over 100 "conservative economic think tanks", otherwise known as sleazebag PR/ advertising agencies have been set up by big business, across the continent, in the mid 70s.

With the prices going up and wages going down every day, with an over 1,000% inflation of living costs since the Fraser Inst and fellow propaganda agencies took over, it is bloody obvious that the tax cuts are disappearing in the bottomless pockets of the "investors" and executives, with their multimillion salaries paid in tax havens.

Ed Deak.

Falcon Vs Dix

I vote for DIX hands down. Let's not forget anything about Kevin Falcon or what the BC Liberals have done. Of course big business wants Falcon as leader, it makes some sense to them at least. Problem is though that usually business keeps profits and rarely passes these savings on down to the average consumer. (Remember the HST savings to the average consumer),so far based on several sources and the media I am voting NDP at the next election. I as an individual cannot fathom another term of the BC Liberals in any of thier current forms. Generally the idealogy of Liberals is sound fiscal management and balanced social programs. If re-elected my concerns are that the so called "new" leader will continue to increase child poverty, not increase the minimum wage and the like. Consider the options 4 more years of a Falcon/Campbell clone or restoring order to chaos in Victoria.

Not a Perfect World

A fair tax commission is a great idea in a perfect world. But voters will want to know what the NDP will do on taxes before voting them in, not give them a blank cheque. Dix is right to engage in the debate on this issue now. Tell people where you are going to sustain and increase government spending and how it will be paid for out of whose pocket.

The proposed fair tax commission would also mean at least two years of no tax changes under an NDP government and the prospect of increased deficit spending to pay for NDP promises. Again, not a platform the BC voter is naturally inclined to support.

Lastly, the Bob Rae fair tax commission supported an HST structure in 1993, combined with lower property taxes and higher income taxes.

@ ActOfBlog.com

I'm sad to see that some are still peddling your brand of childish, facile political economy. The suggestion that there is a 1:1 correlation between business tax and consumer pricing is the same ideological nonsense the right wing has been shoveling for at least twenty years. And there were 10 years before that in which the neo-liberal right warmed that steaming pile up to just the right temperature at which the public was prepared to swallow it.

An example of the way your economics "work": since the Canadian dollar has been at or near parity with the U.S. dollar we should have seen a corresponding decrease in Canadian Consumer pricing. In other words, if we make the costs of doing business cheaper (which a rise in the value of the loonie, it seems to me, accomplishes in view of the global nature of our economy), those savings should be passed along to consumers. In general, of course, this doesn't appear to have happened. Indeed this doesn't happen precisely because this level of analysis is too simplistic, asinine even, to be anything more than a sales pitch by business to the electorate - "please subsidize the increase to our profit margins!?!"

In reality, markets (like businesses) are complex, and require constant management in order make them behave in the way that people want. Also, because markets are now global, it is basically true that an increase in corporate taxation will not spur an increase in consumer pricing because the rest of the market will exercise a stabilizing effect on prices. Of course, once other governments follow suit, business might be able to increase consumer pricing. Moreover, I suppose one might argue that over time this would stagnate the economy - but this only speaks to the fact that markets run in service of corporate interest serve mainly corporate interest. So what we need is markets serving the interests of the people who live with them... any good ideas?

Vote DIX

History repeats itself:
Remember the Lewis slogan: "Corporate Welfare Bums"?

Maybe Dix can carry on in that vein now and get the media to actually mention it?

ActsOfBlog

Really? You should ask yourself then why business is against taxation on itself and all for taxation on consumers.

Your simplistic reasoning doesn't stand up.

Tax Shift

“In 1996, Goepel Shields investment analyst Hamish Kerr, a man who described the [NDP] industry strategy as ‘destroying capital’, recommended a capital strike. Kerr advised his industry listeners, ‘If you really feel strongly that the BC government is taking you down the road to rack and ruin, stop investing.’”—CCPA Follow the Money page 17 [[http://www.agobservatory.org/library.cfm?refID=70224]] and how many mills are still operating on Vancouver Island.

We want jobs; why do we tax them?
We want value added industry; why do we have a value added tax?
We want goods and services; why do we tax them rather than bads and vices?

The tax system is a mess—full of loopholes for the rich and poopholes for the poor. There must be a better way. Checkout Tax Shift [[http://www.sightline.org/research/books/tax-shift/tax/Tax_Shift.pdf]]. The tax code is a CODE, and no one seems to have the decryption code.

Yes, we need to examine the whole tax system—inclusive, fair and transparent.

Economics 101

Hello?

Corporations don't PAY taxes - they COLLECT taxes on behalf of the government. When Dix promises to raise corporate taxes, he is taxing you by pretending to tax someone else.
Any tax that a corporation pays is passed along to its customers - you and me.

Sooke

That's like saying people don't pay taxes, they collect taxes on behalf of the government.

If business didn't pay taxes they wouldn't care what their tax rate was.

Farnworth on Tax Policy

It is important to note that Farnworth has also entered into the debate, suggesting that revenue from the existing carbon tax be channelled into public transit. This implies shifting some or all of the $928 million raised by the carbon tax from offsetting tax credits and tax cuts for business and individuals, though he hasn't stated how he would do so.

The curious will want to review how the carbon tax "revenue neutral" scheme is structured in the
provincial budget (see pages 105 and 106).

Hopefully some enterprising reporter will be asking Farnworth which tax cut or credit he would claw back.

The BC Lieberal mantra, Empire's Illusion & Political Democracy

We must cut spending.

We must cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

We must deregulate.

We must cut taxes on the corporations.

We must privatize our commons: air, water, lands, forests, etc.

We must privatize public assets, Medicare, BC Hydro, BC Rail, BC Building Corporation, ALR, etc.

We must close schools and burden post-secondary students with high levels of debt;

We must extract maximum wealth from the creativty and work of labor

Screw the environment, screw labor standards, screw worker safety, especially screw the poor and working poor, immigrants.

We must appoint our allies and supporters to positions of power and decision throughout society.

We must always remember there is a class war, and whilst Warren Buffet said the rich are winning we must always be viligant to insure it so.

We must, together with the media, spread the illusion that this is a democracy and that voting for a change of 'characters' will change this mantra.

If we awake from Empire's millusion, this spectacle, we clearly see the reality that this is not democracy. Political Democracy is something different, something which can be defined with precision not mangled by mass media and party oligarchs. Whilst it includes social democracy of a more equal society and respect for human rights -political democracy is more than social democracy. Political democracy requires not a change in 'characters' or 'parties' or 'policies' but a change of the institutional meme that makes this mantra hegemonic. Political democracy requires institutional innovation that recognizes & empowers the soverignty of citizens, that legally divides and balances the powers of state so that abuse of power is checked, that enables the truth that when the represented are present and empowered (via full powers of recall, referendum, impeachment) the representative is no longer needed.Twitter: Justicenow_2288

Sooke - Corporations privatize profits

and socialize their costs as much as gov'ts will allow them. Corporations don't manufacture $ for us to spend.

Any profits corporations make is spent on increased salaries and bonuses.

Average remuneration to the top 100 corporate executives in Canada was $5 million last year. In Sweden, it was $800,000 and in the US it was closer to $100 million per executive.

That is how corporations spend their excess profits. On themselves!

Let them pay those profits in taxes, not on another vacation home in Monaco.

Sooke

I don't know what to say... I can only repeat myself:

I'm sad to see that some are still peddling your brand of childish, facile political economy. The suggestion that there is a 1:1 correlation between business tax and consumer pricing is the same ideological nonsense the right wing has been shovelling for at least twenty years.

The relation between corporate taxation and consumer pricing is not the same as the income to expenditure ratio of your household finances. This should be clear to you - first, the fact that for the majority of us, our household finances are not operating on a growth economy model is a key difference. If this particular kind of ideological claptrap were true (the fantastic idea that there is an essential parity between individual and corporate political economics) you would have to argue for an increase in real wages, or a significant decrease in commodity pricing at the same time that you argue for a decrease in corporate taxation - both of which would likely have to be legislated since neither would be in the rational interest of corporate capital. To argue the simplistic position that market competition brings down prices ignores factual history; over time, markets as they currently operate tend toward less competition, not more.

Moreover, the corporate sector does not typically operate by running deficits (which most North American households, not to mention governments, now do). No one is suggesting that the corporate sector should run deficits, just that when the corporate sector is the only part of the social system showing economic growth numbers it is time to think about a more equitable redistribution scheme for the net social profits being produced by the system.

One of the first things this involves is that we stop repeating and believing the same ideological nonsense over and over again: that corporate capital operates transparently and straightforwardly in the fashion that we operate our daily household budgets and occasionally excercise political rights.

Wanna see the shit hit the

Wanna see the shit hit the fan? Have some 'think tank' say that the corporate tax rate go back the 2001 level, and the chartered banks to pay provincal taxes too.

Wanna see the...

I imagine it would hit the fan... then people would settle down and get over the corporate media scare tactics and go back to work, study, retirement, etc. I think political cowardice in the face of corporate posturing is what got us here in the first place.

Corporate taxes in Ireland

Corporate taxes in Ireland 12.6%, France 33%, Italy 31%. If tax reduction is so wonderful how come all those corporations don't come to BC?

Dix's comments seem to be right on the money

Today, in the The AlterNet, and The Nation, Johann Hari speculates:

Why is everyone being so passive? Why are we letting ourselves be ripped off? Why are people staying in their homes watching their flat-screens while our politicians strip away services so they can fatten the superrich even more?

shepsil

Interesting read, thanks

Business will be squealing

Business will be squealing worse than a pig with its tail caught in the door...

Where is the outrage about Falcon getting free advertising from the business goons? Personally I do not care but if Unions did that for Dix the likes of CTV, Global, CKNW, Province, Sun etc would be squealing to hog heaven...

If these business are not happy they should be nationalised without compensation.After a few times they will smarten up.