Wednesday, December 14, 2005

VAT and Fried Chicken. Or there’s no such thing as a ‘good’ tax.

The other day I was in KFC for Tooney Tuesday. Do you realize that if you buy one tooney you don’t pay PST, but after two, you do? That’s an addition of $0.20, a tooney! I have been buying toonies since they started some 5 years ago and saw it go from $2.00 to $2.22, to $2.49 now. Maybe when your purchase five toonies, you should ask for separate bills?

Which leads me to suggest that this whole discussion about the GST and a 2% cut over three years is rubbish. It was Mulroney, a conservative, who put it in; and now Harper, a conservative, is suggesting we ‘reduce’ it! Talk about adding insult to injury.

No tax is a good tax. I’ve heard all the arguments. If they were to suggest an increase of the GST, a VAT, to 15%, but get rid of, and that reads ‘completely eliminate’, the personal income tax, I’d say that’s the person to vote for. But Chrétien ran on a platform to get rid of the GST, which was supposed to be temporary, and look at it now. And the income tax was also supposed to be temporary too, at one point in time!

So is the argument temporal?

I think the whole VAT (includes PST and GST) and income tax systems are screwed and what we need in the next leader is a visionary, who will take drastic measures to dump double taxation. Wasn’t that the principle on which the whole fairness of the tax systems was based? We need a leader who will say ‘Who says we can’t get rid of personal income taxes or the GST in its entirety? “Just watch me!”’

Look at the savings in Govt bureaucracy alone.

Target marketing is good for a temporary solution, but I plan to be around, in Canada, for at least another 50 years.

2005 12 14.

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