Not the time for tax overhaul

LETTERS

Mr. Morneau: I do not doubt that the use of Canadian controlled private corporations, “CCPCs,” is on the rise, to the tune of 300 per cent as you state, nor refute the untampered 37.2 per cent difference between personal and business tax, or the eight-fold increase in CCPC use since the 1970s for that matter, but the real question is why?

A partial answer is tax disparity itself, it is no coincidence to the popularity of CCPCs, as business taxes fell and personal taxes rose, the public looked for recourse plain and simple. When a government starts favouring corporate entities over its own citizens, its thinking is not forward or prescient, it is reactionary.

The perception of the time was that lower competitive Canadian corporate tax within a global economy would woo new business and with it employment for Canadians. The sad fact is that over this period, existing corporations covering all industries, being what they are, and supposed to be (efficient), took full advantage of donating less to government coffers while shedding jobs at the first sight of market wobble or tightening margins, more than could ever be recouped or enticed externally. Thus, the burden of the deficit in both government revenue and job creation had been placed back squarely on the shoulders of an already taxed-to-death Canadian individual.

CCPCs are or will be shortly, for hundreds of thousands of individuals, the best last chance to take what knowledge and experience they have gleaned from their respective industries and restart afresh. Industries, one might add, that have through the rapid application of technology deemed those same Canadians redundant and or expendable.

Yet it is this same technology coupled with CCPCs that has and will move Canada forward on the employment front despite the quagmire of international politics, interprovincial squabble or government waste (not to mention aboriginal and environmental concerns and red tape).

A true tax overhaul is desperately needed, but now is not the time to tinker, nor is the CCPC the place to start ... if so, I envision breadlines before brass rings!

Charlie Drakobich

Halifax, N.S.