“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
Benjamin Franklin wasn’t the first person to make the claim, but it has been the one most people reflect back on when it comes time for tax season.
I don’t think anyone enjoys paying taxes. In a world where everything is becoming more and more costly, watching more money siphon away is frustrating. Canada enjoys many benefits from our tax dollars, like our health care and other government services, but that doesn’t always make the pill less jagged to swallow.
One popular method of rallying the voter base is, pretty obviously, tax cuts. We all talk about tax cuts. We all hope for tax cuts. But when it comes to politics, what benefits do we see when those two words are bandied about?
In an election season already sprinting towards the finish line, both Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre and Liberal Party leader Mark Carney promised tax cuts this week. Both said that they are promising relief to the “middle class,” per Carney, and a “tax cut for workers,” per Poilievre. At time of writing, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh hasn’t yet revealed his tax plans.
But independent analysis of both parties’ policies show that those cuts will benefit Canada’s wealthiest more than workers who earn far, far less than. The Canada Centre for Policy Alternatives has found that for a worker who makes less than $60,000 a year, neither tax “cut” will benefit them as much as it will a millionaire, or multi-millionaire, or multi-multi-…
Well, you get the idea.
When we speak of the middle class, and the workers, I’m not sure when those words began to apply to individuals making millions of dollars each year, rather than those making a modest income, or just squeaking by paycheque to paycheque. Stats Canada found that in 2022, the median after-tax income for Canadian families and unattached individuals was $70,500, the centre point in a distribution of Canadian incomes. When wealth has the potential to significantly impact day-to-day life for the better, much as poverty impacts it for the worse, this election, who is actually left to look out for the rest of us?
– Ken Kellar
