7 of the silliest and politically motivated tax policies recently introduced in Canada

financialpost.com:

Tax and politics are like wine and cheese: they are inextricably linked and impossible to do one without involving the other.

During election times, this link becomes rather obvious. Promises here, promises there, with many of them being very silly.

Given the close link between the two subjects, it is also inevitable that ideologically driven people — that is, most of us — have opinions on tax. Opinions, however, are not foolproof and are often wrong. People who are strong partisans will often blindly attach themselves to their political party’s views on taxation regardless of their appropriateness.

For example, “tax the rich” or “it’s not fair that the rich have all the tax breaks” are often rallying cries for those left of centre. Even if you show them how much tax the so-called rich are paying, they will often keep trumpeting their rallying cries. It would often be more intellectually honest for such people to simply say, “We want the rich to pay the tax.” Crazy, sure, but more honest.

Another silly opinion is that the solution to Canada’s fiscal problems is to “tax all the money that is sitting offshore.” For sure, we should chase pots of gold and rainbows that don’t exist. Nutty, despite all the “studies” that certain think tanks regularly pump out.

Ideally, politics and ideology should be minimized when introducing taxation policy. Without such minimization, taxation policy can quickly become nutty. Here are some recent examples, both federally and provincially.

1. The 2016 increase to personal taxation rates by the Liberals, which promptly introduced a new top-end bracket with a four percentage point increase upon taking office. This pushed marginal rates at the high end to more than 50 per cent in many provinces.