Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!ubc-cs!alberta!calgary!enel!steven
From: steven@enel.ucalgary.ca (Steven Leikeim)
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Re: A ?new? Proposal (was Re: Tax Revolt Now!!)
Message-ID: <1729@cs-spool.calgary.UUCP>
Date: 19 Aug 89 07:03:56 GMT
References: <1989Aug14.231027.11461@lsuc.on.ca> <1989Aug15.135601.12057@tmsoft.uucp>
Sender: news@calgary.UUCP
Reply-To: steven@enel.UCalgary.ca (Steven Leikeim)
Organization: U. of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Lines: 31

In article <1989Aug15.135601.12057@tmsoft.uucp> mason@tmsoft.UUCP (Dave Mason) writes:
>1) Has any serious consideration ever been given to having ALL revenue
>collected through a (progressive) personal income tax.  Cancel all sales
>taxes, user fees, etc.  It would be MUCH cheaper to collect.  The top
                                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^

Would it be cheaper to collect? If everyone only received a/several 
paycheck(s) this would be fairly easy. But you also have to take into
account interest (You did report ALL of the interest your bank paid you
on your savings account on last years income tax return, didn't you :-)  ),
capital gains, dividends (We currently are careful, sort of, about taxing
income twice), etc.

>rate would probably be 60%-70%, but at least you'd see all the
>taxation in one place, and the government could tune the
>progressiveness of the tax as appropriate.

As has been mentioned before, if the tax rates are too high for a group
of people, they will simply move their income to another country which
has "better" (for them at least) tax laws.

BTW, I would like to see a flatter income tax than currently exists. This
however will take lots of time and may people (At least the lobby groups)
will probably howl that this is unfair to all Canadians because they will
produce statistics to prove that somebody will end up paying MORE tax than
before.

Steven Leikeim                        |
University of Calgary                 |   There are lies, damned lies,
Department of Electrical Engineering  |        and statistics.
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