Tax changes will hurt entrepreneurs

Greg Fingas’s Sept. 14 article titled “Paying the price for tax fairness” completely misrepresents the impacts to the middle class and plays into the Liberal minister of finance’s ‘Tax Fairness’ scheme about taxing Canada’s top one per cent.

To be upfront, I am a salaried employee who earns a living representing a wide variety of businesses in the residential construction industry. The more I learn about the tax changes Minister Morneau is suggesting, the more I realize that the top one per cent of our industry will not be affected by these tax changes.

Who I do see impacted in our industry are the type of owners who employ almost 50 per cent of the Canadian workforce and often pour their tax savings back into their business, which creates even more employment.

Through the ups and downs in the housing market, many of our small business members operate on the margins; in the good years they do well, and in the soft years they hang on. These tax changes will hamper their ability to invest back into their businesses and the innovation they depend on to create new and exciting products.

The tax pain these changes will impose will ultimately work its way back to the staff they employ and the number of people they hire.

The biggest tax change in 45 years is bad for small-to medium-sized business, bad for the economy and will drive away all incentive for young and small entrepreneurs to take the risk of investing in their entrepreneurial dreams.

Stu Niebergall, MBA, president & CEO Regina & Region Home Builders’ Association