Tax unfair to middle class

Dear editor Re: Being self-employed has many challenges, Herald, Sept. 15

Wow, our Member of Parliament has the NDP leaping to save small businesses and the middle class from the clutches of the Liberal tax collectors. That’s quite a switch from the historical NDP position of never meeting a tax they didn’t like. How Conservative of them!

Maybe bordellos really can operate for the protection of chastity. But we have to wonder what NDP leadership hopeful and fiery social justice warrior, Nikki Ashton, will have to say about this sort of tax restraint.

One area of tax unfairness that Mr. Cannings has illuminated is the use of foreign tax havens, like Panama and the Cayman Islands, by the rich. Both the Trudeau Foundation and Liberal Finance Minister Bill Morneau reportedly use these subterfuges to shade their bets when dealing with the taxman. It’s nothing new for rich elitists to have a different exposure to a ìfair shareî of tax payments than the great unwashed who are obliged to feed the insatiable maw of government.

In case people missed it amidst the selfies, photo bombs and theme socks, the biggest tax grab that the Trudeauites have imposed on the middle class, whom they purport to champion, is their Carbon Tax. While this isn’t a legislated federal tax, it’s a tax that Trudeau dragooned the Provinces into accepting by linking it to continued federal health funding transfers.

Only Saskatchewan Premier Wall and Manitoba Premier Palliser had the spine to call this shell game for what it is. The other premiers decided that when rape is inevitable, the best response is to lay back and profit from it.

While Trudeau has justified his carbon tax as a necessary measure to save the world from climate change and to display his environmental virtue to the UN, the revenues that it creates have absolutely no legislated connection to carbon emissions. It’s just tax dollars which the provinces are free to use for anything from school lunches to infrastructure projects.

The Liberal carbon tax is just another GST under a different label which is estimated to cost the average family an additional $2,569 in taxes annually by 2022. That’s hardly a tax break for the middle class.

The NDP may wish to slay this Liberal tax dragon too. Anything that helps keep the majority of our wealth out of the hands of big government and leaves it with those who earn it is to the good.

John K. Thompson

Kaleden