Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Dennis Howlett highlights how the Libs are only making our tax system even less fair by overreacting to trumped-up criticism of a plan to close minor loopholes: As the dust settles on the Trudeau government’s private corporation tax reforms, Canada seems to
Continue readingTag: Dennis Howlett
Accidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Phillip Inman and Jill Treanor write about the debt time bomb facing UK households. Jim Edwards discusses how widespread underemployment has become the norm in the UK – making unemployment alone a misleading indicator as to workers’ well-being. And Owen Jones highlights
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: New column day
Here, on how the Libs’ weakness in closing even modest loopholes is allowing tax entitlement to win out over tax fairness. For further reading…– Justin Ling offers a useful look at the minor moves to rein in the abuse of private corporations in this year’s budget. Konrad Yakabuski rightly argues
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Dennis Howlett writes that a properly designed and fair tax system can reduce inequality both by ensuring support for the people with the least, and ensuring that the people capable of contributing the most actually do so: We need to tackle inequality
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This and that for your Thursday reading. – Darlene O’Leary sets out the results from public consultations for a national anti-poverty strategy. And Dennis Howlett writes that our tax system could (and should) be set up to build a far more fair and supportive society. – Meanwhile, Ryan Cooper makes
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Dennis Howlett comments on the distortions in Canada’s tax system which redistribute money upward to those who need it least: It’s time for Mr. Morneau to deliver a comprehensive and comprehensible tax strategy that will work in 2017 and beyond because, currently, tax
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The Star’s editorial board calls for an end to regressive federal tax breaks. And Dennis Howlett asks why the tax evaders who used KPMG’s illegal offshoring schemes are being offered secrecy and amnesty for their attempts to siphon revenue away from the Canadian
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – The Star’s editorial board calls for an end to regressive federal tax breaks. And Dennis Howlett asks why the tax evaders who used KPMG’s illegal offshoring schemes are being offered secrecy and amnesty for their attempts to siphon revenue away from the Canadian
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Hassan Yussuff and other labour leaders offer their take on how we can develop a more equitable global trade system: The next challenge before us is to build on and improve all post-CETA trade and investment deals to ensure they meet a progressive
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading.- Graham Lowe and Frank Graves examine the state of Canada’s labour market, and find a strong desire among workers for an activist government to ensure improved pay equality and social supports. Oxfam reaches sim…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Dennis Howlett discusses the public costs of allowing tax avoidance – as Canada could afford a national pharmacare program (and much more) merely by ensuring that the rich pay what they owe:Eliminating tax haven…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.
– Dennis Howlett discusses the public costs of allowing tax avoidance – as Canada could afford a national pharmacare program (and much more) merely by ensuring that the rich pay what they owe:
Eliminating tax haven use could save Canada almost $8 billion a year. That’s enough to cover universal public prescription coverage almost eight times over.
Time after time, budget after budget, poll after poll, those in charge make it sound as if we’re too poor as a country to afford the programs that would really improve Canadians’ lives. The fact that revenues are lost to poor policy on tax havens and loopholes is often conveniently ignored.
…
At this stage of the game, the federal finance minister doesn’t need to raise taxes to pay for pharmacare. Bill Morneau just has to make sure that Canadian multinationals and wealthy individuals pay the tax rate we already have. That isn’t happening right now.It’s simple. Canadians can continue to support a tax system that lets the richest avoid paying $8 billion in taxes annually — or we can tell them that the party’s over. Instead of ignoring what is happening in the Cayman Islands, Panama and other tax havens, we can urge our politicians to invest the taxes owing on those billions into services that benefit individuals, families, communities and the country as a whole.
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There is solid data supporting raising taxes in some areas. But that’s an argument for another day. The issue at hand right now is that we do have enough money for pharmacare — likely enough for public dental care as well. Through a series of misguided and outdated decisions driven by the tax dodge lobby, we are needlessly and destructively giving up that revenue.It’s time to fix those old mistakes and use the tax system to help this country live up to its potential.
– Meanwhile, Owen Jones discusses a European Commission ruling finding that Apple can’t validly avoid paying tax through a special arrangement with Ireland. And the Star rightly slams the Fraser Institute for presenting a misleading picture of where public revenue comes from and what it can accomplish.
– The CP reports on the Libs’ plans to facilitate the use of temporary foreign workers for liquid natural gas projects in British Columbia – meaning that the last supposed benefit for the province of engaging in a dangerous industry seems to be as illusory as all the others. And Jeremy Nuttall notes that Justin Trudeau seems set to open the door even wider to entrench the use of exploitable foreign labour by multinational corporations.
– Finally, Catherine Cullen reports on the effects of privatized health care insurance which are being presented in an effort to defend Canada’s medicare system from would-be profiteers:
Continue readingJohn Frank, a Canadian physician who is now chairman of public health research and policy at the University of Edinburgh, argues in his report that more private health care “would be expected to adversely affect Canadian society as a whole.”
He cites research that suggests public resources, including highly trained nurses and doctors, would be siphoned off by the private system.
More Canadians would face financial hardship or even — in extreme cases — “medical bankruptcy” from paying for private care, he writes.
Frank even suggests there could be deadly consequences. He says complications from privately funded surgeries often need to be dealt with in the public system because private facilities are generally less equipped to handle complex cases.
“If such complications, arising from privately funded care, are not promptly referred to an appropriately equipped and staffed care facility, the patient is likely to experience death or long-term disability, potentially leading to reduced earnings and financial hardship.”
Overall, “in my expert opinion,” Frank writes, the change would reduce fairness and efficiency and “society as a whole would be worse off.”
Accidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.- Caroline Plante reports on Quebec’s scourge of medical extra-billing and user fees (as identified by its own Auditor General). And Aaron Derfel notes that the federal government has done nothing to app…
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading.- Simon Kennedy highlights another key finding in Oxfam’s latest study on wealth, as the global 1% now owns as much as the other 99% combined. And Dennis Howlett reviews Gabriel Zucman’s Hidden Wealth of Nations, …
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Dennis Howlett reminds us that we can raise enough money to strengthen our social safety net merely by ensuring that a relatively small group of privileged people pays its fair share. And Seth Stephens-Davidowitz examines the glaring nepotism which festers in the absence
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – Jon Talton discusses how the increased automation of our economy stands to disempower workers and exacerbate inequality if it’s not combined with some serious countervailing public policy moves. Peter Gosselin and Jennifer Oldham comment on the broken link between productivity and wages. And
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Michael Rozworski observes that the NDP’s $15 per day national child care plan has irritated all the right people – while still leaving ample room for improvement in the long run once the first pieces are in place. And PressProgress notes that the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Paul Buchheit highlights how inequality continues to explode in the U.S. by comparing the relatively small amounts of money spent on even universal federal programs to the massive gifts handed to the wealthy. Christian Weller and Jackie Odum offer a U.S. economic
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Dennis Howlett discusses what we lose when corporations are able to evade taxes, and points to some positive signs from the NDP in combating the flow of money offshore: Federal and provincial governments lose an estimated $7.8 billion in tax revenues each
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Joseph Stiglitz writes that while we should expect natural resources to result in broad-based prosperity, Australia (much like Canada) is now turning toward the U.S. model of instead directing as much shared wealth as possible toward the privileged few: There is something deeply
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