When we talk about taxes and tax rates and what the appropriate level should be it is always interesting to look at the language being used.
Taxes are a necessary evil in my eyes. No one that I know likes paying tax whether we are talking income tax, sales tax or corporate tax. I believe in lower tax rates, fewer exemptions and allowing people to keep their own money. I feel the same way about corporate tax rates.
Right now the corporate tax rate is 15% and plenty of Canadians think it’s too low. Tax the corporations we hear. But why? When you tax companies you are taking money that could be used elsewhere, such as job creation, in order to fund the government.
In an interview with Bloomberg wire service NDP Leader Tom Mulcair shows that he doesn’t believe lower taxes do much of anything but he also shows that he thinks the money corporations earn doesn’t really belong to them.
Mulcair said the tax cuts have helped Canada’s biggest companies “the oil companies and the banks who didn’t ask for it and don’t need it.”
Really? Let’s repeat the end of that statement from Mulcair. He said the companies “didn’t ask for it and don’t need it.”
Since when did we all have to start asking for permission to keep more of our money? Since when did we need to justify having our money so that we could keep it rather than hand it over to government?
Mulcair is showing his socialist thought process here. It is your money when government says it is your money.
In addition to calls for taxing corporations we are also told that we need to tax the rich. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives issued a call for a 35% tax rate on the wealthy the other day. On what moral basis can you justify taking more than one-third of another persons income?
Just because you need it? Just because they have money and you want it?
You can argue about what the proper and efficient tax rate is for individuals or corporations but just know that when you are arguing with someone like Mulcair there is likely a fundamental difference in worldview. He and other progressives see all money as belonging to the collective and governments will tell you what you can keep.
That worldview makes the rest of us little more than serfs getting an allowance from the lord up in the castle.