[DJones]

Originally Posted by #-3

This is a strong assumption for an otherwise very protective government to welcome trade with open arms, but it's nice that your optimistic look on that was it was basically a little worse than coin flip.

Trumps the one that approved it... of course I thought he wanted it.

Originally Posted by #-3

This is almost unintelligible, but if I understand you correctly then you think the think the corporate tax cuts were offset by dividends which didn't increase? Those who know seem to think that the tax cut directly effect Alberta's budget to the tune of $2.2B/year, so I generally prefer to trust them over you.

At it's core your argument basically seems to ignore the reality of leveraged debt, people don't need to realize assets to benefit from owning them, they can leave the money sheltered and benefit from borrowing at low rates against their equity. Basically use the money to earn more money before paying taxes, which as I've explained before is the fundamental cause of the wealth gap.

Dividends tax did increase... It's automatic. Corporate taxes going down, there is less money to refund when the dividends are declared. That's what a dividend tax credit is, a refund of corporate taxes. Again, jack up corporate taxes to 50% and all dividends are tax free.

And I'm not ignoring it, that's the whole point of the strategy. Corporations average 8-10% ROA. Let them keep the money and let it grow. Like what is the worst case scenario here? The corporation doesn't sell, doesn't declare dividends and reinvests everything into the economy. That's exactly what I want. I'll wait until the guy dies if need be. Once corporate profits are declared the tax is ours, our system is incredibly tight that way. They just control when they pay it. Even discounting the cost of debt to service the liability is win. The longer they leave the money in Alberta the better. Don't pay taxes for twenty years, that's a good thing.

Originally Posted by #-3

This one, wont play as well with the crowd who's been enjoying me bashing your ideas, but PST is a bad idea, because again allowing those who have the capacity to save money to differ the date at which they are taxed is the fundamental cause of our wealth gap. The person hit the hardest by sales taxes is the person who spends their last dollar first regardless of how much tax they pay, because interest. In a world where investment debt has become so cheap it is almost riskless, whatever amount we decide we are going to tax people they should be taxed as early in the process as possible, otherwise you are ingraining a compounding wealth gap into the system.

This is some 100 year old logic that's been solved repeatedly by near every country on earth. No one wants to tax poor people, its a waste of time. If you are poor 80% of the things you spend money on wouldn't have PST attached to them. Every sales tax on earth has a basic good exemption list. If it does effect them there's a 1000 ways to give the money directly back to them.