Chapter 4- Budget slashes Income Tax
Link: http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=d94976b1-d47d-4264-8a46-3aa2b2ee9b81
Almost all of the BC taxpayers are getting a 10 percent tax slash in their income tax as of February 19,2007. This message was announced by the Finance Minister Carole Taylor through the pledges of Gordon Campbell. Taylor says this new tax reduction is aimed for people who live in British Columbia and have yearly incomes of $100,000 or less than $100,000. This announcement is introduced as a leading of the new budget's housing measure and what Taylor would call the "the most aggressive, ambitious, comprehensive housing initiative in the history of British Columbia. Taylor adds that the key measure involved is the First Time Home Buyers' Program. This program gives an incentive to people are wants to buy their first homes. This project that worth $2 billionaire is started so that it can help British Columbians that are facing housing problems whatever the problem may be. With the new tax cut, BC will have the lowest taxes in all of Canada.
To many people, this is absolutely a good news!!! 10% off taxes, who wouldn’t like that? Think of all that money that you could be keeping to yourselves instead of giving it to the government. You could also be helping the government, even without paying that much tax. There are Canadian bonds where you can lend money to the government, and they will even pay you back interest. However, on the other hand, cutting 10% off taxes will also lead to more complaints on public services. Such as healthcare, education and more. Since less taxes are collected from us, there might be more complaints about the lack of doctors in the hospitals, the long waiting line and lack of service. For education, more teachers may go on strikes and/or schools can’t afford to buy better supplies, technologies and etc…
posted by winnie | 8:12 PM
4 Comments:
Yes, it will be very nice if the government cuts 10% of the taxes that all citizens of BC have to pay. But, as you said, the public services will be more unsuccessful in coming up with the excess money to pay all the public workers, like the education system, public transportation, broadcasting and communications, electricity and gas, fire services, healthcare, police services, waste management, and water services. It is also not fair to the rest of Canada. If BC will be the province with the least tax rate, then alot of people will start moving here creating a very large number of population and alot of traffic, more accidents, more crowded residential areas, etc. This then can not be supported by the low tax rate that is going to be offered in BC, so the government will have to increase the tax rates to support the increased population of BC anyways, crushing the government's main idea of success with low tax rates.
10% of the taxes is very nice. But i would rather have it put in in the services we get offered by the government, providing better services that will benefit everyone. But the question is why do we have rather high GST and PST taxes compared to the rest of the provinces in Canada? Is it because the government is not getting enough tax revenue to cover its expenses? Why is the government slashing taxes? Did they succeed in some way to get more taxes revenue even though we pay less tax?
If this tax reduction is aimed at people who have an annual income of about $100,000 and can afford housing, then how do the lower class people benefit? Shouldn’t people who earn much lower incomes get more help from the government and be the ones who get the tax reduction? Besides, I think a 10% reduction would not make much of a difference for people who earn an annual income of $100,000. Also, if the government cuts taxes, the quality of the services they provide would decline. And I do not think that we should risk lowering the quality of the government sponsored services anymore than they already are.
Yes, cutting tax would definitely an advantage to B.C. Similar to my article, if the government is cutting 10% tax, it will attract more people and businesses to invest or work in B.C. which will improve the economy of B.C. because more people would move in and they will spend more for their daily lives. But there are concerns that will not benefit B.C. such as increasing the debts for the federal government. Once the debt keeps increasing, our government would have less to spend on public services such as education, health care, social assistances, etc.
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