[Newsbot]

Title: Former MLA David Swann refuses to pay taxes until oilpatch pays theirs
Category: Provincial Politics
Posted By: DrCaleb
Date: 2020-01-23 07:22:43
Canadian

[DrCaleb]

I like this idea of Doctor Swanns! If Jason Kenny says the Oilpatch deosn't have to pay their municipal taxes, then nethier do we.

[uwish]

I am not sure Kenny said they don't have to pay, at least I have never heard or read him saying that. Aside, I am totally fed up with taxes in general; I am tired of paying way more than my fair share just to be abused everywhere I turn.

[stratos]

Boycott taxes. Now if Climate Queen Greta would back that you might get most of the world to agree with her.

[Thanos]

The good doctor should at least acknowledge that a lot of those companies that didn't pay their taxes went out of business due to the policies of the federal branch of the political party he belongs to.

[DrCaleb]

Thanos Thanos:

The good doctor should at least acknowledge that a lot of those companies that didn't pay their taxes went out of business due to the policies of the federal branch of the political party he belongs to.

Not all of them.

$1:

On Monday, Ponoka County Reeve Paul McLauchlin said about 40 per cent of unpaid taxes are from severely distressed companies in an industry hard and widely hit by lower resource prices. The rest of the shortfall is from companies that continue to operate but don't pay.

"My personal opinion is that this is a tax revolt," McLauchlin told Canadian Press. "They are using this as a lever to decrease their assessment and change those costs."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ ... -1.5435254

[Thanos]

"Continue to operate" doesn't mean they're making much revenue. In fact after the cost of business is deducted they could be bleeding all of their miniscule profits away even before any taxes are paid. I don't like Jason Kenney but he's correct about this. You can't keep dropping the tax hammer on business that are already on the edge and expect them to keep operating. Do what Swann wants and the number of abandoned wells would double in the space of a year from the owners and operators simply walking away from Alberta altogether.

One of the most successful things the left has accomplished in the past couple of decades has been to demonize the word "corporation". It's led to things, like in Calgary, where a small business that employs a few people is seen on the same level of "evil" as a mega-corporation and should therefore be subject to the same merciless and punitive levels of taxation as an entity which creates billions in revenue. The result typically ends up with empty storefronts, unoccupied yards in the industrial districts, and desolate office towers downtown. The failure of this anti-business attitude is out there in the open for anyone who can be bothered to see it. But the "more taxes! more taxes! more taxes!" beat from the usual suspects just keeps going on. The limits of what can and should be taken in taxes has been reached. Push for even more and just watch the current bleeding turn into a massive revenue collapse altogether.

[DrCaleb]

Thanos Thanos:

"Continue to operate" doesn't mean they're making much revenue. In fact after the cost of business is deducted they could be bleeding all of their miniscule profits away even before any taxes are paid. I don't like Jason Kenney but he's correct about this. You can't keep dropping the tax hammer on business that are already on the edge and expect them to keep operation. Do what Swann wants and the number of abandoned wells would double in the space of a year from the owners and operators simply walking away from Alberta altogether.

I have to pay my taxes, even if I'm already starving to death. If businesses can't maintain operations because they can't pay bills, then they fold. That is Capitalism. Where do all those tax breaks go anyway?

In any other context, the taxes get paid first. But Municipalities, as the article states, are limited in their ability to collect. So business will stop paying them because there is no recourse for the Municipality. But the municipality still has to provide water, sewer and road service to the delinquents.

And Kenny is fine with this, from his statement.

[Thanos]

You can't walk away from taxes that are a built-in part of a price, like the GST on everything or gas taxes on the cost of fuel. You can however ask for an extended period of payment on business taxes that are collected in the same manner as yearly income taxes. And businesses also have allowable deductions that are also in spirit no different at all from the deductions that can be used for income taxes. So these comparisons are all apples & oranges on things that aren't even remotely similar.

When this country begins to question the amount of subsidies and direct taxpayer bailouts given to the Ontario auto sector or to Bombardier in Quebec then I'll take the wailing from someone like David Swann seriously. Until then fuck 'em. Just typical of how things are done in this country - bailouts for Central Canada are all well & good but any breaks for O&G in Alberta is absolutely verboten. And, as is true on so many other issues, it's amazing how similar the left is to the right on a subject like this. The hardcore left, like Swann, absolutely hate the thought of giving breaks to O&G when it's under stress as much as the hardcore right went rabid when Obama & Harper worked to bailout* the auto sector when it nearly collapsed altogether thanks to the 2008 recession. More ideology and theory uber alles when it comes to how the extremists think, and not a single damn given to the basic idea that if you help out businesses under stress they keep operating and keep people employed. And those employment deductions make up more revenue for the tax base than could ever be lost due to unpaid business taxes. This is why I flipped out on the assholes here in Alberta who want the public sector gutted by layoffs. Those are still jobs that taxes are deducted from and those are people who contribute even more taxes via buying the items that having a job enables them to purchase.

No foresight in this society anymore. There's no big picture to be seen because it's been burnt to the ground by the ideologues and other assorted maniacs. This is why things are the way they are now because no one, even if they're willing to try, can see outside of the wall of their own personal echo chambers. And this is why we're accelerating towards a massive collapse because no one is using their goddamn eyes to see the real world or the hows/whys of the way things need to be done.

* a bailout I fully supported in order to save those jobs, and something I was stabbed in the back thanks to the people in Central Canada who didn't give a flying fuck about what happened in Alberta when hard times hit here

[uwish]

well said Thanos, but don't have a stroke!

[Thanos]

I should be so lucky to escape that way. Gonna get "do not resuscitate" tattooed on my chest so when the inevitable happens the paramedics won't keep me here against my will.