NEIL BROOKS DEBUNKS TAXATION MYTHS
The following article is by Rolf Auer and it appeared in the April, 1997 edition of the Long Haul newspaper published in Vancouver, B.C., Canada and which is committed to fighting poverty locally, nationally, and globally. Keep up the good work.
Professor Neil Brooks gave the kick-off
lecture in
the fourth of a series of lectures co-sponsored by the Canadian Center
for Policy Alternatives and the BC Teachers Federation. Neil has
taught tax law and policy at Osgoode Hall in Toronto for 25 years.
He would like to reduce the deficit with tax changes, not service cuts. By contrast, the government has concentrated on reducing program spending (money spent on programs like health, education, operation of the government, etc.) which has fallen from 16 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (the sum total of the money transactions in an economy) to 12 per cent, almost one-half of what it was in the early 1980's.
"I think that will have devastating effects on the economy and well-being of the nation," said Neil.
The agenda of neo-conservative and business interests is to liberate private greed and legislate against democratic policy. "The shift from public to private concerns is profoundly wrong," said Neil.
The reason the right-wing and business interests seem so misguided is because they are not concerned with benefiting Canadian, only with making the rich richer, and the powerful more powerful.
Some arguements against taxation that we often hear from business people were debunked.
For example, Canadians are overtaxed; taxes are a burden. In fact, taxes are the prices people pay for goods and services from their government. Taxes give good value, be it schools, universities, parks, livable cities; they provide social cohesion with public education and public health.
We often hear that Canada is a highly taxed country. In fact, Canada's taxes amount to 3 percentage points less than other industrial countries, and 5 percentage points lower than European countries.
We hear that allowing people to keep more of their income would allow them more freedom. But people also want a say in the quality of their collective life.
We hear that we should reduce taxes on the rich, so that they will invest more. There is no objective evidence to support this idea. In fact, when former US President Ronald Reagan tried that in the US during the 1980's, the rich used their extra money to accumulate more material goods; this is not what is meant by investing.
Virtually all the special programs for tax relief benefit primarily the rich. There are about a hundred of these programs.
One program singled out by Neil was the capital gains exemption, which alloed $100,000 tax free over an individual's lifetime. That program cost the government $25 billion over eight years.
Another business favourite is the tax deduction for entertainment expenses. The governemt loses about half a billion a year on this. An example used by Neil was the seats given out for "business purposes" at the Skydome (in Toronto); instead of business, you see people with their families and friends enjoying the freebie. "There is more fraud in an afternoon at the Skydome than there is in welfare offices in a month," said Neil.
After being deluged by cold-blooded, reptilian neo-conservative policy recommendations via all sorts of news media, I found Neil Brooks' talk to be refreshing and uplifting.
