Update


Last November we pointed to articles about how individual taxpayers are contributing an increased share of government revenue.

In a story entitled What the Finance Minister hasn't told Canada's middle class taxpayers, Barrie McKenna reports for the Goble and Mail how more and more tax breaks are being directed at - dare I say it - special interest groups.
“Canadian families keep more of their hard-earned dollars as a result of the government’s actions to reduce the tax burden,” the 419-page document points out.

So it might come as a bit of a surprise to many Canadians that the government’s long road back to a balanced budget is as much a story about rapidly growing tax revenues as it is about more widely discussed spending cuts.
McKenna says that this is partly due to the fact that more people are working and incomes are rising so more people are paying more income tax and partly due to the cutting of taxes elsewhere so that the ratio of income tax to other taxes has shifted. Tax breaks have come in the form of a reduction in the GST from 7 to 5 percent,
"But the drift started long before that – the result of lower tariffs from free trade, lower corporate tax rates and other policies that have shifted more of the load of government onto individuals." ...

The party – and the Reform Party from which it emerged – has long espoused broad-based tax cuts for individuals. But what it has delivered up to now has been mainly targeted relief to very specific groups, for often political reasons. The budget touts 160 tax measures that have saved Canadians $160-billion since 2006, including breaks for children’s sports, art lessons and firefighters.
 And so it goes.

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