afransen
Senior Member
Whatever the merits, you can't argue that it didn't save money for individuals.
Spurious reasoning. I expect you supported Adscam because some crooked advertising execs got some money?
Whatever the merits, you can't argue that it didn't save money for individuals.
Spurious reasoning. I expect you supported Adscam because some crooked advertising execs got some money?
Are you serious? There's a big difference between a misappropriation of government funds and a tax policy which rewards people who take transit with a refund. I have friends who now take transit because the math works in their favour for a bus pass. You've talked about rewarding fitness with a tax rebate in another thread, but here you are against rewarding transit use? Are you that partisan that you can see no good in a policy unless it comes on Liberal stationery? Tell me, were you against the GST when Chretien was railing against it or did you think it was a good tax back then too?
I don't deny that money should be spent improving transit. And if that money had gone towards that goal it might well have made transit more accessible. But I doubt it could motivate people to commit to transit beyond their daily commutes the way the tax credit has. I am all for setting price signals that reward good behaviour (transit tax credit) and reward bad ones (sin taxes + gas tax).
As an aside, is it just me or do the NDP look absolutely ridiculous in all this? Their position, frequently repeated, is "We don't want an election. We will be voting against the government on this confidence motion." If that contradiction isn't a crystal clear illustration of why they can't seem to ever become a governing party, I don't know what is.
It's a silly credit that refunds 15% of transit use given proof of purchase. The vast majority of the funds that are spent through this program go to people who already use transit.....Ideally, rather than subsidize, we'd increase the cost of less sustainable forms of transportation so that they bear the full cost of the infrastructure they use and negative externalities.
The biggest problem I find with the transit tax credit (and pretty much all of these credits), aside from the added complexity and distortion to the tax code, is that they don't do a thing for you if your income isn't high enough to pay taxes. Of course those are the people who would benefit most from the credit.
I usually support the NDP and I have to say I'm not at all pleased with them at the moment. I can appreciate their situation though. Party members and supporters can't stand Harper at all. His policies and behaviour are far too out of line with Dipper values for sitting NDP MPs to vote for them without alienating their base. However, Ignatieff's popularity is costing the NDP and that cannot be ignored. They want to postpone an election in order to rebuild support, which would pretty much mean getting into bed with the devil and losing their base's support.
Then you Robert Stanfield with the epic football fumble that cost him the election of 1972. Then he had the Freeze policy stolen from him in 1974.
Would the same reasoning not apply towards your own proposal for a fitness tax credit? Would it not end up in pockets of regular gym goers and cost everyone else more? If that's the case, is it terrible policy? At it's core, I see nothing wrong with crafting tax policies to reward good behaviour. Perhaps the problem with the transit tax credit is that it's just not big enough to prompt people to switch from cars. That does not mean the idea is all that bad. I can easily see the Liberals expanding on this. I do agree with you, that it should have been coupled with some kind of tax on negative behaviour (increase gas tax maybe?).
If we are going to give cuts to the middle class, what's wrong with making it conditional on them actually doing something for it?
As for increasing the complexity of the tax code, can you imagine how much the Green Shift would have done?
That does not mean the ideas don't sometimes have merit. As long as we don't up with a US style tax code that comes in phone book sized volumes, we'll be okay to tinker here and there.