Tory Tax Cuts Suck (for low income Canadians).

[c9]

Note: this post contains vagaries of Canadian tax system. Enter at your own risk.

Tory campaign promises: lower the basic personal exemption by $400 (this is an increase to income taxes), raise the lowest tax rate from 15% to 16%, and lower the GST from 7% to 6%, then 5% later.

What's going to be better for Canadians? How about, especially, lower-income Canadians?

Sylvia lives in Eastern Canada and makes $15,000 per year.

She gets $8648 removed for the federal basic personal exemption. Then she pays 15% of the remaining for federal tax. That's $979.80.

She gets $8061 removes for the provincial basic personal exemption. Then she pays 9.68% of the remaining for provincial tax. That's $329.02.

Total is $1308.82.

That's under the current setup. Let's try it under the Tory plan:

She gets $8248 removed for the federal basic personal exemption. Then she pays 16% of the remaining for federal tax. That's $1080.32.

She gets $8061 removes for the provincial basic personal exemption. Then she pays 9.68% of the remaining for provincial tax. That's $329.02.

Total is $1409.34.

So the Tory plan means paying more for personal income taxes, to the tune of about $100. OK, not a huge difference, plus the Tories will be reducing the GST by one percent sometime next year. Let's give them a bonus and give them the GST cut for all of 2006, which they can't actually do. That means that Sylvia would be saving 1% of sales tax on every purchase. To match the $100 savings, she'd have to spend... umm... $10,000 on GST-applicable things.

Here are some things that do not get charged GST: groceries, residential rent, and medical services, and financial services.

How much money is Sylvia spending on taxable items? Not $10,000.

Yes, the suppliers of things pay GST too, so there's trickle-down in theory. I doubt there will be sudden drops in prices though. I believe most suppliers will simply pocket the minor savings.

Cheap shot to finish up: Some rich Tory voters could save the entire $100 in GST just by buying this.

Comments

[keenman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree -- that's incredibly lame. I'd seen the reports in the news, but thanks for calculating the numbers. And actually a hundred dollars to a low-income earner is quite a bit of money. When you're scraping by just to make ends meet, every little bit counts.

[adamdavid85.livejournal.com]

It's the Tory way... fuck the poor