Wealth tax is silly political posturing

OTTAWA, ON: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the federal government to rein in spending to tackle the deficit in light of a Parliamentary Budget Officer report that shows an extreme wealth tax would not cover the budget gap. “Politicians’ eat-the-rich mentality is just silly political posturing,” said Franco Terrazzano, Federal Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “The PBO data shows that the Trudeau government’s deficit spending would burn through the extra cash in about a month, so if the feds don’t start saving money, it will be everyday Canadians that get clobbered by the debt tab.”

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Pitfalls of a wealth tax

The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report today showing that a “one-time tax on extreme wealth” might generate $12 billion annually for the federal government, or $60 billion over five years. The CTF pointed out that this revenue would cover about one month of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 2021 deficit spending. Over five years, the federal government’s deficit spending is expected to total $332 billion, according to the 2021 budget. Even with this wealth tax revenue, the government’s budget gap would still be $271 billion. The budget projects annual spending to be more than $100 billion higher by 2026 than it was in 2019. “The feds need to take the $1-trillion debt problem seriously, and that means they shouldn’t be raising permanent government spending by $100 billion by 2026,” said Terrazzano. “Politicians need to be honest with Canadians about how they intend to pay for all this government debt, and they should be looking for ways to reduce spending rather than pushing wealth taxes, which are ineffective, complex and would hamper our economic recovery.” The CTF published a report on the pitfalls of a wealth tax which can be found here. Franco Terrazzano CTF Federal Director Email: fterrazzano@taxpayer.com Twitter: @franco_nomics

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