Ottawa balances books one year early, posts surprise surplus | CTV News

Good timing for good news.

Sovereign governments don't use Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP).

That means what they are calling a surplus may only be so on paper.

Sovereign governments don't use Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP).

That means what they are calling a surplus may only be so on paper.

From the actual document:



And they don't include the breakdown of budgetary surpluses by department, so we don't know which departments short changed their responsibilities by underspending. Like we saw with DND in past years.

Creative accounting.

When Liberals do it, they're noted as the guys that were the financial "geniuses" of Canada. (Martin and Chretien) their forecast always fell 'short' and the surplus was always larger than expected.

This is Canadian politics.

The sold the GM shares for $2.1 Billion so really still a 200 million deficit.

Liberal math.

Governments sell off things all the time. Property, assets, equipment. Do we not include that too?

In fairness, corporations also do this all the time when they sell off assets and put the proceeds to the bottom line as a dividend or profit.

Meaning it's not just liberal math, but it is math.

In fairness, corporations also do this all the time when they sell off assets and put the proceeds to the bottom line as a dividend or profit.

Meaning it's not just liberal math, but it is math.

In fairness, that's business.

Our company just sold a property for 10 million. That's not dishonest, that's just business!

My concern is that the Tories are concentrating too much on deficit/debt when there's a lot of indications that issue really isn't all that high right now on the priority list for most people. I know that with all that's happened to Alberta over the last year, including to myself, that I could care less about deficit-busting by the federal government.

How about getting rid of personal income tax?

If I was still into populist politics I'd say yes but reality dictates otherwise. The only way to do it would be to replace income with sales taxes and with this idiotic something-for-nothing way too many people think now it wouldn't ever be doable. The freak-out over the GST, which was essentially the final nail in the Mulroney coffin and assured the election of Jean Chretien, still looms too large as the primary example of what would most likely happen again by attempting to replace one tax with another.

I thought everyone already read my idea: My alternate budget - abolish income tax

Summary: increase GST back to 7%, corporate income tax to 19% (what it was in 2009), freeze Small Business Tax where it is now (cancel the cut all 3 major parties propose). Most importantly, treat the federal debt as a mortgage, pay the whole damn thing off, and when it's gone completely abolish federal personal income tax.

Catches: EI & CPP premiums stay. Provincial income tax is under authority of provincial governments, so anyone who wants to change that has to talk to them. In those provinces with a health insurance premium, that's also provincial.

Details: Shift GST credit to a line item on your pay stub instead of a quarterly cheque. This reduced administration cost to run the GST credit system, so we can double the amount per year. But cancel the GST credit entirely when federal personal income tax is abolished. Shift dividends from personal income tax to corporate. Short term is a tax cut, but most importantly it means dividends will stay taxed. Tax cuts stimulate the economy, generating more revenue from remaining taxes. But contrary to Ronald Regan, the government never gets all of the revenue back that it lost though the cut. And completely shut down the personal income tax division of the Canada Revenue Agency. CRA will require full staff for one more year after federal income tax is no longer deducted from your paycheque, just to process the last tax return. And CRA won't be gone all together, because they also collect GST, corporate income tax, and all the little nuisance taxes. Employers currently submit an annual return for their portion of EI & CPP premiums, so we could add an additional page for the employee portion. That means employees will still pay EI & CPP premiums, as they do now, but employers will submit annual returns for both. The only income tax return you would have to fill out at all would be provincial. If provincial governments want to retain provincial personal income tax, they can pay for collecting it.

Legalize marijuana and tax it. If it hasn't been by the time we're ready to cancel federal personal income tax, then corporate income tax will have to raise by 2% back to 21% (what it was on election day 2006).

Spending cuts to do it now: cancel UUCB & replace with Liberal childcare from past elections. That means replacing an $18.0 billion program with a $0.5 billion program. The Liberal program from the November 2005 fiscal update through 2011 election would pay for increased spaces, not mail cheques. Not sure about Justin's current program, I suspect it'll cost a lot more than $0.5 billion. Restrict income splitting to seniors (a current Liberal promise). Cancel "boutique" tax cuts. Further cut spending by $6 billion, and every new spending program has to be paid for by cutting an equal amount from something else.

If we started in January 2006, we wouldn't have had to cut anything or increase any taxes. We would have had to freeze GST and corporate income tax. Corporate capital tax and corporate surtax would be abolished. And the new spending promises from the 2005 fiscal update would have had to be postponed by 2 our 3 years. Probably 3. But only postponed. And the debt would be gone in 15 years, so federal personal income tax abolished effective January 1, 2021. But that didn't happen. If we do it now, it'll take 18 years because the debt is larger. So federal personal income tax abolished effective January 1, 2034.

CBC did a more honest job of reporting on this...

Go fuck your hat.