Opps

The Harper government announced it ran a larger-than-expected budget surplus of nearly $14-billion last fiscal year and immediately pledged to return $725-million of this to voters as tax breaks. globe and mail

I love the idea that 725 million of 14 billion will be returned to the taxpayer as a tax break. About $35.00 a head. So, using that handy number we can work out how over taxed we are. A return - and let’s not call it a break, there is no slack being cut here - of $350 per head would be around 7.25 billion. Call it half the over taxation.

A conservative, as opposed to Liberal-Lite, Prime Minister would apologize abjectly for taking so much more than was needed and promise to return half and devote the rest to reducing the national debt.

and that might be a person I’d think of voting for.

Written by jay on September 28th, 2007 with 3 comments.
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Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Jason Hickman
#1. September 28th, 2007, at 8:07 PM.

I suppose … but aren’t they putting the $14B into debt reduction, and the $725M in tax cuts is coming from savings on interest payments?

Hey, I’d be as happy as the next person to have lower taxes and I think this shows the feds have the room to do so. But when they do come up with a surplus, I can think of worse uses for it than paying down debt.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Alan
#2. September 29th, 2007, at 12:49 AM.

But there is debt and debt. A whack of it is unfunded federal superannuation, a whack Canada savings bond and other bond obligations, another whack domestic commercial debenture instruments. Canada’s debt is very stable and largely controllable by the feds within their own regulatory jruisdiction…unlike the US. Maybe 50-50 split is not such a bad idea.

Get your own gravatar by visiting gravatar.com Chris Currie
#3. October 5th, 2007, at 10:47 AM.

I am firmly in the “pay off the debt” camp. Go Harper! A Liberal government would have spent it all, and not on tax breaks, either.

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