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Big tax cuts needed to deal with aging population, think tank says

STEVEN CHASE

Globe and Mail Update

Latest comment posted at 11:27 AM EDT 28/02/07

Savings and investment required to deal with a future where fewer workers must support more elderly, C.D. Howe Institute urges. ...Read the full article

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  1. David Simon from Canada writes: If the worry is about an aging population then there should be tax cuts-to families with lots of kids.
  2. Vic Hotte from Kettleby, Canada writes: An aging population doesn't age forever. All things come to an end. Like everywhere else in the world, Canada's population has increased continually, so the world's human population load is 6.5 billion and rising. There really is no shortage of people. There's nothing wrong with the human population taking a breather on further increases. It is about time we all planned for population stability, so we have a good idea how many people will need education, health and recreational services. There is no magic to cramming more and more people into the pipeline --- it just creates shortages and strife. The C.D. Howe Institute is right to tell government to stop short-changing the populace while it sweetens the pay and pension packages for politicians and government workers. Everyone should have a liveable wage/benefit package, and politicians should stop stuffing various programs (like E.I.) and the Millenium Funds (never used) to fund nefarious schemes (like Adscam) that do not benefit the general public.
  3. C R from Canada writes: David: I have a different kind of "cut" in mind for those with lots of kids. If they can't afford to have and support kids and themselves, couples shouldn't be having kids. Don't rely on tax cuts so that my tax dollars have to support you!
  4. Jo Geoghegan from Canada writes: The key to helping aging Canadians to fend for themselves is to encourage saving toward self funded retirement. We know that those who have always blodged on the stystem will continue to do so. People with disabilities will, of course, continualy have to be supported solely from public funds. Working Canadians will save what they can in RSP's, and many will manage to provide top up to the basic OAS and enhanced CPP. The last thing you need to facilitate this demographic bulge is more money via convoluted tax concessions thrown to weathy corporations that are presently awash with money. The CD Howe institute is great at producing moneypots for the wealthy at the expense of the ordinary working Canadian. At present, Canada taxes retirement severence payments accrued over many years as income earned in the year of retirement and taxes it at marginal rates. Unbelievable! This once in a lifetime lump sum of one or two weeks salary per year of service is generally the only sum of this size that a working person may get. This impost was foisted on us in the egregiously punative Michael Wilson Tax Reform under the disingenuous Mulroney government. Canada is the only OECD country to do so to it's retiring elderly as they prepare to retire. Most other OECD countries allow it all, or most of it TAX FREE status. A little retirement gift after a lifetime of taxpaying. Not here in our cascading multitaxed overtaxed Cadada. Business has legions of lawers and nabobs to ensure minimum payment of taxex. So called private equity groups will make Trust Funds look like ameturs in tax avoidance- sorry, minimization. Australia, for example, has abolished all income tax on superannuation plan payouts. THAT'S RIGHT ABOLISHED ALL INCOME TAX ON SUPERANNUATION PLAN PAYOUTS. What do you think of that, Mr. Flaherty. How about you, Mr. Goodale. What about you, Jack and Olivia Layton? Oh sorry! This is about WORKING CANADIANS - NOT YOUR BAG. EH?
  5. Duncan Munro from Langley BC, Canada writes: Jo, the NDP has always opposed taxing severance payments so I don't understand your comments about Jack Layton.

    However, an aging population will require more social assistance in terms of medical and home support, and it seems to me that raising taxes is what is required and this will also prompt businesses to increase productivity to offset the higher taxes. Lowering taxes while expecting a massive increase in the numbers of elderly Cdns is simply insane.
  6. Jo Geoghegan from Canada writes: Duncan, I dont recall any great NDP effort to right this outrage. In fact I dont detect any noise from Mr. Layton about it now, with a new budget in the works given his balance of power situation. This nasty stealth ( in more ways than one) tax that is never discussed, possibly because the Finance bureaucracy thinks that nobody is aware of it until it is a fait accompli. Maybe YOU could raise it with the policy comittee if you are active in the party. How did Canada get to be so out of step with everyone else in the OECD group on this penal tax on elderly retiring Canadians. It reeks of the bottom feeding low of a rapacious and greedy taxation system. That despite the tens of billions in EI surplus, the cascading sales tax and excise on alcoholic beverages, health fund premiums federal provincial and municipal taxes, etc etc. Is the citzen worker allowed nothing with which to build a nest egg? Exactly whom do you propose to raise extra taxes from, Duncan. Dont expect from corporations. Just read the CD Howe report. The unskilled and undereducated non English or French speaking foreign nationals flooding into this country on the foot of bogus refugee claims ( gay partners fleeing government persecution in Burkina Faso, strewth ) seem of more import to the Jack Layton and Olivia Chou than the health and welfare of ordinary working Canadians. Time to get off your self rightious butt, Jack and do something for us . You too, Mssrs Flaherty and Goodale. Youll be hearing more from THE GREY BOOMERS. So get used to it, and get moving or we will get busy moving you - out of your cushy sinecures.
  7. Vote NDP in the next federal/provincial election from Ottawa, Canada writes: Jo Geoghegan, you seriously need to take a sociology course at university!

    Anyway how does tax cuts really benifit seniors. Just to make the rich ones more richer than ever. I don't think so. The elderly need to save as much as possible and tax cuts would reduce government revenues just as health care spending demands are high. If we cuts taxes and health care spending how does this benifit seniors as they already make up the burden of our health care system.

    p.s there should be no opposition to this remark
  8. Sam B from Cambridge, Canada writes: Quote from Duncan Munroe ..... "raising taxes is what is required and this will also prompt businesses to increase productivity to offset the higher taxes"
    Wow - fantastic logic! Why don't we just set corporate tax rates at 99%? Businesses will just increase productivity to offset the higher taxes! Brilliant idea! We'll have high tax revenues and the highest productivity in the world! Ooo haaa

    Or - we could have a stagnant, risk-adverse, unimaginative business sector that relies on outdated capital equipment. No thanks, I call that "France".

    And as far as Vote NDP - based on your comment in another article "China correction" where you ask why are we "letting" China control our stock market. You seriously need to take a macro economics course, but let's keep it at the high school level for now! If you pass that, then we'll let you venture onto a 1st year uni course. Until then, how about you refrain from posting in the business section - you're just looking plain silly.
  9. W. Mayne from Markdale, Canada writes: Income trusts had become a vehicle whereby many seniors could assume more control over their own personal pension plans, especially those seniors who did not have a defined benefit pension plan. During the recent Parliamentary Hearings on income trust Finn Pushman, representing the C.D. Howe Inst, supported the government's plan to obliterate income trusts. Now there will be more seniors getting their full OAS and OAS supplement and relying on government instead of themselves. Dear C.D. How Inst: You can't have it both ways!!!!
  10. Yves Fortin from Canada writes: C.D. Howe-style tax cuts would not be needed if the government had left income trusts alone. Retirement savings and future retirement income have been dealt a gigantic blow by Flaherty's decision to destroy the income trusts. In this he received the assistance of CD Howe Institute, the same guys who are now deploring the problems of insufficient retirement saving and income. The only people who will profit from Flaherty's move are the large corporations that had been advocating the destruction of the trusts. Question of the Day: Who finances the C.D, Howe Institute ?
  11. ali mansur from Etobicoke, Canada writes: Lowering corporate taxes because of an aging population makes no economic sense. Someone should explain this magical methodology. Maybe we should call these guys the C.D. "How" Institute, because they never explain how lowering corporate taxes will save the world.

    According to them, the corporate tax rate would be 0%. There isn't a problem on this planet that isn't solved by lowering corporate taxes -- except of course for climate change. Lowering taxes to reduce pollution is non-productive, according to the CDHI.

    To compensate for an aging population, the correct solution is to tax seniors and their employing corporations now, before they stop paying taxes, so that this money can go toward mitigating the year-over-year change that will occur to our economy in the near future.
  12. Gardiner Westbound from Canada writes: .

    This is the silliest, most self-serving taxation proposal so far. Corporate tax cuts belong to shareholders, not seniors.

    .

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