Taxing the Rich
Niels Veldhuis of the Fraser Institute takes me to task today in a Letter to the Editor in response to the story, ‘Tax the rich more in Canada, study urges” (Nanaimo Daily News, Dec. 12).
He claims that “the story focusing on the report by Canadian Labour Congress economist Andrew Jackson is seriously misleading… the report conveniently ignores the impact of state and provincial income taxes.”
In fact, the small section of my study addressing this issue acknowledges that “state income taxes in the US are generally lower than provincial taxes.”
The point I did make was that very high income New York City taxpayers- the heavy-hitters on Wall Street – have to pay a state and city income tax which, on top of the top US federal rate of 35%, is enough to bring them to a combined rate of 50%.
I just wanted to quickly add that given the recent across the board corporate tax cuts that Harper and crew announced in the recent mini-budget, one would think that this should provide more traction for taxing the rich.
Isn’t this the standard rational behind these business tax cuts, reduce on the business end and increase on the personal end. So okay, get at it and lets start taxing those high incomes stemming from business investments and ownership. Oops- hold on, most of that is in off shore accounts, registered in other countries or is sheltered by a plethora of high priced tax lawyers and accountants- jumping those personally earned investment through every loophole and meandering around even the most feared and mightiest of tax collectors.
And of course taxing the rich is counterintuitive isn’t it, as the typical “don’t tax the rich” argument that pervades the discourse goes , the rich are the ones that need to have large disposable incomes so they can invest and create jobs for the rest of us. Right, so even if we could find those rich incomes and get them out of their sheltered darkened hiding spots, the rest of us would not enjoy these high quality jobs that seemingly pervade our labour force because altruistic investors would not provide that steady even flow of productive investment into the brick and mortar of your local high quality/ highly innovative Canadian company.
Andrew you speak such blasphemy!
Look out! Technicality! Technicality!
Is it just me or does it look like Veldhuis is just grasping for straws here?
The Fraser Institute’s form letter, which overlooks American municipal income taxes, appears in today’s Windsor Star.