An apothegm repeated often in programs treating alcohol abuse:
“One drink is too many and one thousand is not enough.”
The statement also applies to business leaders and their lobbyists. No matter the subsidies and tax relief gained and the poli…
Tag: taxation
The Progressive Economics Forum: Taxing the Rich
Over at the Globe and Mail Economy Lab our friend Stephen Gordon argues that there are only limited revenues to be gained by taxing the rich. He plays around with some back of the envelope calculations based on CRA data on the incomes of those making more than $500,000 – accurately enough, I think – […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Ontario NDP Platform
Pollsters tell us that Ontario’s New Democrats may double their seat total in next month’s provincial election. It’s also entirely conceivable that they could be part of a coalition government at Queen’s Park. But what’s actually in the party’s election platform? One central feature of the NDP’s proposals is to implement a tax credit for companies that hire new workers. The tax […]
Continue readingNorthern Insights / Perceptivity: Corporate tax dodging out of control?
Interesting report from the Institute for Policy Studies in the USA:
“Guns don’t kill people, the old saw goes. People do.
“By the same token, corporations don’t dodge taxes. People do. The people who run corporations. And these people — America’s…
The Disaffected Lib: Put It On the Kids’ Tab – A Cautionary Tale
We got used to it after WWII, governments borrowing money to be repaid by taxpayers in the future. In an era of foreseeable, sustained growth that wasn’t so bad. The next generation of taxpayers would be much better off and quite capa…
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: Obama’s Debt Ceiling Rope-a-Dope
Perhaps it’s just because he appeals to my deeply cynical inclination regarding politics in general, but MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell seems to be providing the sharpest, most insightful commentary these days concerning the strategic machinations behind all the posturing over raising … Continue reading →
The Progressive Economics Forum: Deconstructing BC’s carbon neutral government
Besides the carbon tax, one of the most important BC government climate action initiatives has been the adoption of Carbon Neutral Government. That is, count emissions from public buildings and travel, reduce them as much as possible and pay for carbon offsets to negate the rest. As of the 2010 calendar year, the BC government […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Navigating challenging economic waters
Down south, the Obama administration is in a dangerous game of chicken with Republican congressional leaders, who are cynically holding the US economy hostage in order to impose a radical agenda of spending cuts. Obama has seemingly bought into the rhetoric of cutting debt, rather than focusing on the real US problem of unemployment. Yet, […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Underground Economy and Business Tax Evasion
Statscan have produced interesting and important new estimates of the upper bound size of the “underground” or “non observed” economy, putting it at a seemingly modest 2.2% of GDP in 2008. (Some of this is already included in GDP which is adjusted to take into account some hidden and unreported economic activity.) The 2.2% estimate […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: BC’s Regressive Tax Shift
With much of the talk on taxes in BC about the HST, we issued a new report today that looks at the bigger context for BC’s tax system (Vancouver Sun oped here, CTV News story here). Iglika Ivanova, Seth Klein and I compare and contrast BC’s tax system after a decade where tax cuts were […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Still Progressive and family friendly: evaluating Québec’s income tax policy
University of Sherbrooke economist and fiscal specialist Luc Godbout with Suzie St-Cerny and Michaël Robert-Angers has just published a timely research paper evaluating the net fiscal impact on households of Québec’s income tax system.Timely because, as discussed here be Armine Yalnizyan recent data from stats can shows that though globally income inequality has risen during […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Federal Budget Refried
Was it worth the wait? Hardly. Today’s federal budget is about as appetizing as two month-old pizza warmed up in the microwave. I guess they deserve high marks for consistency, though not for economic policy or a long list of other things. The Harper government’s June Budget is almost entirely a reprinted version of the […]
Continue readingPolitics, Re-Spun: Corporate Personhood Alert!
We have to spend some time this week carefully watching BC business playing good cop and bad cop. The good cop is opposing the idea of a corporate tax rate of zero, while the bad cop says that corporations should be able to vote, like real human beings. British Columbia Chamber of Commerce president John […]
Continue readingRandom Ranting Raving and Ratings: How Poor is Poor Enough?
Harper and Alexander Recently Conservative Chris Alexander made the assertion that Canada has eradicated poverty. Statements like this are disheartening. Many Canadians have to make the difficult choice between paying the rent or buying food. And because people in Canada… ..
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