Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamui4356
I really shouldn't have to explain why that's wrong. This is something that should really be apparent to anyone. First of all, a the wealthy do not spend as much of their income on taxable goods as the poor and middle class. Much of their money is invested, while the poor and middle class are forced to spend more of their income on taxable goods. Not to mention, it would likely hurt the auto industry, the consumer electronics industry, and likely the retail industry as a whole. Further, even if one were to claim they spend about the same amount, a national sales tax is going to be harder on someone making 24,000 a year than on someone making 2.4 million a year. The latter applies to a flat income tax as well. There's a reason most countries in the world have progressive tax rates after all. A national sales tax and/or a flat tax are in effect giving a massive tax cut to the wealthiest members of society, while increasing the tax burden on the poor and middle class, and cutting federal revenue in the process. Flat taxes and national sales taxes are the economic equivalent of troll physics.
edit: If I seem more annoyed than usual in this post, it's because I had to retype it several times due to browser crashes.  |
Canada uses a mix of a progressive income tax and a national sales tax (often collected alongside a provincial sales tax). Under the previous Liberal government, tax cuts would typically be on the income side, but if you had a low income you could apply for a sales tax rebate as well. When I was in university some of us geekier students would refer to it as "the federal grant for gaming" because most students qualified and it gave us a bit of money to upgrade our PCs.
Unforunately the current Conservative government decided it wanted to do sales tax cuts instead, even though they could have given low and average income Canadians a bigger tax cut by pumping the same amount of revenue into income tax cuts and sales tax rebates. Which may have in fact been the point, seems like its stock strategy for conservative politicians to gut maximize reduction in incoming revenue with their initial tax cuts so they can justify cuts and freezes to spending, I've noticed it in a few countries.
(No points for guessing who I'm
not voting for in May... I wish someone would actually point out how bad Harper's record on taxes actually is, but explaining the effects of tax structure seems to be beyond the average election campaign.)