[bootlegga]

herbie herbie:

How exactly does "revenue neutral" help Alberta?
You just had a gov't that threw away a revenue stream with the carbon tax. A refusal to implement a sales tax (or your revenue neutral idea) might increase consumer spending, but that only helps collect more GST. Without a PST Alberta gets nothing.

$1:

That makes it revenue neutral for most Albertans (except the top 20% or so) and brings in about $1.5 billion every year from tourists and non-resident workers (TFWs and other Canadians).

It's a good start to a PST, which is often called a political suicide tax here in Alberta.

In a decade, after everyone has accepted it, the tax can go to 5% or the income tax credit can be scaled back a bit to increase revenues.

[fifeboy]

Thanos Thanos:

fifeboy fifeboy:

Thanos Thanos:

Bring in a sales tax. But only if it's countered with a minimum 10% cut in business and middle/working-class personal taxes. The layers and layers and layers of taxes have to be stopped somewhere. Want to know the core reason why Gen X and everyone else after the Boomers will have much-diminished lifestyles? It's because we're stuck paying three or four times more just to survive than what the generations prior to us had to shell out. It's too much, it's simply too fucking much.

Does that include 23% interest rates on a home loan? That's what I paid in the '80's!

Taking out a mortgage is a voluntary act. The government doesn't force anyone to buy a house. Taxes though? That's as compulsory as it gets.

Yep, a tent would have been cheaper.

[bootlegga]

Thanos Thanos:

Because $60K a year, before taxes, is rich according to some.

No said that but you.

The point of the $57K threshold is to make it revenue neutral for lower income Albertans, while still generating revenue from those buying luxury goods (typically those who make FAR more than $57K/year), tourists, and non-resident workers (like TFWs and Newfies).

[herbie]

Thanos Thanos:

Because $60K a year, before taxes, is rich according to some.

Just picked that number
Because no one from elsewhere is going to go to Alberta to make less than 60K, no one's gonna really hurt or leave Alberta if they make more than that.
Good God the old Liberal gov't in BC cut subsidies for $75 a month MSP premiums at $28K. I had to pay $150 a month out of a $2000 pension for a while cuz the wife had just started a job. Still here with 2 cars, a roof over my head and food in the fridge.
Obviously making 100K+ you'd pay more.
That 1.5 billion claim is BS, you don't have as many out of province workers now as you used to. They're all back home on welfare now. Spending that on meth like the fucker next door.

[Thanos]

When you take more from someone at $60K per year you turn them into low-income rather quickly. Leaving someone with only $3000 a month after taxes, in a world of wage stagnation + non-stop inflation + ever-increasing taxes, isn't doing them a favour, not when they have mortgage/rent/vehicle/food/kids to cover with that amount. This is why, for all the idiocy that reigns in this country at any given time, the rates are decided by those in the government who are at least somewhat informed. And in the end only approved by a politician who at least has some common sense to put a stop to a bad idea, even if it's just to not piss off more voters. If it were left up to the voices on the internet the basic tax rate would be about 90% without any return/increase in government services because something something something whatever, something.

This is why, in places like the US, cretins like Donald Trump end up winning. You guys talk like this far too often and scare the crap out of the people you say you're trying to reach. They'd rather support a fucking piece of lying garbage like that than take the risk on your side with it's "everyone's gotta pay more" mentality.

[herbie]

$1:

Leaving someone with only $3000 a month after taxes, in a world of wage stagnation + non-stop inflation + ever-increasing taxes, isn't doing them a favour,

Sure isn't. Try living on a pension that's even less!