Taxation Policy

Responsible Fair Taxation

Cutting taxes is only part of the problem. The manner in which our tax dollars have been spent or mismanaged must be resolved immediately.

Almost everyone would like to see further tax cuts but the extent of these would have to be weighed against other priorities like healthcare, affordable housing, day-care, and a dozen other areas including better safety inspection of our food, water and transportation systems. Corporate taxation needs to be reviewed immediately. Everyone that does business in Canada uses the systems of Canada and must pay their share to support a viable progressive system. We must ensure that we have the funds in place to pay for corporate mistakes in environmental issues and not put the burden solely on individual taxpayers.

There is one tax, however, that should be removed: the Goods and Services Tax.

CAP confirms its long-standing policy in that regard. The GST on books, newspapers, periodicals, postage stamps and theatre tickets would be eliminated immediately. The tax on all other items would be reduced from 6% to 5%. In the second budget the GST would be reduced from 5% to 3%.

In the third budget the GST would be TOTALLY ELIMINATED.

The Canadian Action Party would pursue the full employment strategy that was envisioned when the Bank of Canada Act was passed. By getting unemployed people back to work, Employment Insurance and welfare costs would decrease, and tax revenues would increase to help offset the loss of revenue from the GST.

Computer simulations show that the tax can be eliminated over three years, by injecting 68-70 billion dollars into the economy over 4 years without any new tax and maintaining a balanced budget. ($68-70 billion equates to 50% of money supply over 4 years).

When we say that the GST would go, it would go!

Other Taxes

Payroll taxes should be further reduced. The Liberal and now Conservative governments have milked the system to bolster general revenue at the expense of workers and employers. Our monetary policy would end the boom-bust cycle so there would be no need to maintain big surpluses in anticipation of the next recession.

Tax Reform

We would undertake a general review of our extremely complicated tax system to make it fairer, simpler and more equitable.