Well Harper and his conservatives have been sworn in and the big announcement seems to be that he is going To go ahead and give Canadians a "Tax break". A 1% reduction of the GST. That's not exactly what I would call lowering the taxes for those who need it. The GST is applied to all purchases made within Canada or by Canadians, from a kid going to by a bag of chips to a company buying 20 tons of oil to make chips. When you think about it that's a lot of money: 1 dollar off every hundred dollars of sales, and a penny on every dollar.
But the thing is who benefits the most from it. Not that kid buying chips. The richer you are the more likely your are to buy taxable merchandise and frankly companies buy the most, the benefits for a large company could run to the millions. And a poorer person will buy a lot less stuff simply because he doesn't have the money in the first place , gets a lot less in benefits.
Personally that why I find sales taxes like the GST the most fair taxes out there. The more you buy the more you pay in tax. And frankly the more you buy the more likely you are to have money. I'm not saying that cutting the GST won't ease the tax burden on working class Canadians, it will. But the people it will help the most are the ones who don't need that tax break nearly as much. If Harper was serious about a tax break for the average Canadian how about 1% off the income tax of everyone who makes less than lass than say 100 thousand a year.
