I was listening to Gary Doyle show in the car this afternoon and he brought on Peter Taylor from Canadian Business magazine to discuss the topic of income-splitting. The title of his column on the issue is Like Mom and applie pie but I think this issue is more like the mythical "Tim Horton's voter" that has become so popular of late. Income splitting is something that would targeted squarely at the middle-class and would be very popular in the Staples household.
...Consider two couples with identical total incomes. One has a working spouse earning $80,000 a year and one stay-at-home spouse. The other has two working spouses earning $40,000 each. Even ignoring the presence of children, the one-earner family will pay $3,000 more in taxes.
...Income splitting is family friendly, neutral with respect to child care, targeted at the middle class and relatively inexpensive. If that isn't politically attractive, what is?
There was some talk that the CPC would introduce income-splitting during the last campaign but that rumour proved false. This policy is up for grabs and with it any party could grab some votes.
Comments (2)
The USA is one of the few demographically healthy countries in the West and it is one of the few that has this “family friendly” tax concept … it makes you wonder if there is a correlation.
But to answer the article’s question, “If that isn’t politically attractive, what is?”
Catering to the squeaky wheel of special interest groups has (up until the Scooby Doo mother squeaked louder than the feminists) been the most politically attractive.
Is it just me , or are Canadians starting to develop some common sense again?
Posted by nomdenet | October 12, 2006 5:17 PM
Posted on October 12, 2006 17:17
A tax cut is nothing to sneeze at, but if you don’t do something to cut the overall tax burden and cut government down to size, the Staples household will not be any better off in the long run.
If you believe in the family, which evidently you do, then you must realize that government is your enemy. The motivation behind government policy is the opposite of family values - whether it’s daycare, EI, CPP, medicare, public education, foreign aid, or whatever. In every one of these programs, people in government have pronounced your family to be incapable of raising children, saving money, finding a job, giving to charity, etc. and have then gone on to confiscate your family’s money (and the money of your employers and your employees) in order to correct the alleged deficiencies. After taking a very generous cut for themselves.
There is no way you can tweak and adjust a system based on the perverted values of theft and plunder in order to promote “right thinking” values.
The USA is one of the few demographically healthy countries in the West and it is one of the few that has this “family friendly” tax concept
Running up multi-trillion dollar medicare and social security debts is not going to be “family friendly” in the long run. It’s the well-worn road to currency devaluation, business and personal bankruptcies, and investor and professional flight. At best. At worst you could be looking at famine and civil war. Tweaking the tax code is another way of saying “shuffling deck chairs”. It is the anti-family, anti-capitalist and anti-freedom socialist spending programs which will sink you in the end, not the lack of a sufficiently well-crafted tax regime.
Posted by Anonymous | October 12, 2006 6:54 PM
Posted on October 12, 2006 18:54