Touby: Dalton taxes our patiencei—iand everything else

Even before there was history, tax collectors have been the detested scourges on humankind. As far back as cave dwellers, there were thugs in animal skins who forcibly claimed turf and extracted tribute. Today they wear polyester and wool.

In the 1980s I was a national radio commentator for the Financial Post. I reported that the top tax bureaucrat, in what was then Revenue Canada, instructed his tax collectors to view every single citizen and taxpayer either as a likely cheat or a person prone to error.

Tax collectors were to use that mindset to ferret out the concealment of income presumed of every citizen and taxpayer.

It was a barefaced manifestation of tax-collector mentality at its most frightening. After all, these characters are backed up by the power of the gun.

Citizen outrage was sparked by the display and the bureaucrat was criticized. The name of the bureaucracy was changed to Canada Revenue Agency, perhaps in hope of rinsing away that bad taste.

We now see a nominal liberal tossing us into the maw of the most regressive, poor-bashing, economy-crushing tax regime in the nation: the GST taxocrats.

First instituted in 1991 by The Rightly Despised Brian Mulroney, that 7% tax assault against middle-class and poor Canadians favoured multinational corporations, many of which pay little or no income taxes.

He told the Big Lie. GST, he proclaimed, won’t raise prices a whit except one single time.

As if we’re dunces. It raised the price of everything by 7% every time!

Righteous public outrage pushed Mulroney and the Tories out of office, only to be replaced by another neocon, Jean Chretien, a nominal liberal, who lied with a promise to kill the hated GST.

Stephen Harper, of all people, eased the burden somewhat by trimming 2% off the tax curse. Liberals, of all people, griped that it would spell disaster to the federal treasury.

Which brings us to the present day and the current neocon goofball occupying Queen’s Park, Dalton McGuinty, nobody’s first choice for premier, who landed the job by serendipitous default.

Pandering for some mysterious reason to a principal villain from the destructive Repressive Conservative regime of Mike Harris, McGuinty hummed in harmony with Jim Flaherty and inflicted the Tory tax curse on Ontarians.

For the Tories, it’s got to be giggle time. They’ve tricked that doofus into tripping on his dick. The “harmonized” sales tax mess is going to cost him the next election.

You’d think he’d have learned from the experience of another dopey guy bearing the Liberal label, ex-premier David Peterson. When Peterson jumped Ontario’s sales tax by 1% (effectively a 14.3% rise) he was turfed out and replaced by the NDP and Bob Rae. Voters were that mad.

The economic wisdom of Bob Rae (remember job-saving Rae days?) was not recognized in those parlous times when the economy was on the rocks as it is today. He ruled just as the Tories’ new GST was wreaking havoc on a faltering economy, raising consumer prices and crashing businesses. Much like today.

Being a sales tax, GST is a rip off of the poorest. Since they spend 100% of what they get, the poor pay a greater proportion of their incomes in taxes than wealthier Canadians.

That’s called “regressive” taxation. That’s what you expect from Tories, not Liberals. The neocon mantra is: Don’t tax big business and maybe they’ll hire some folks.

Or maybe they’ll outsource your jobs and stash their profits off shore.

The GST regime itself is an abuse of all it touches. Tax collectors complicate and make it more expensive to do business. They force businesses to twist themselves in knots to serve them. And next July everybody in Ontario will be subjected to their harsh, autocratic rule. Thanks to Dalton.

Kids, do you get paid for babysitting? The GST taxocrats could be entitled to some vigorish. Shoveling snow for a neighbour? You could be GST fodder. There is a ceiling one can earn before the tax kicks in, but will you have to prove you’ve taken in less than that ceiling?

The taxocrats will have a right to snoop into every aspect of everything you do that involves money. Thanks to Dalton.

As it did when it was initially imposed on Canadians, this “harmonized” tax gouging will spawn an underground economy. That means more otherwise honest people will become criminalized.

The taxocracy will grow larger and more intrusive. No one is free from their snooping because everyone except some civil servants and salaried employees (an endangered species) sells something.

The sales taxocrats working for Ontario and the provincial sales tax will probably be taken on board the new “harmonized” GST, aka, HST.

The federal taxocrats impose an ugly set of rules. Businesses are dinged for interest if they underestimate this year’s GST based upon last year’s sales. But they’re not recompensed if they overestimate and are owed money. In fact, the taxocrats can decide they want to investigate that further and might delay repaying the over-taxed amount by months. No compensatory interest. Just your bad luck.

They are also able to issue fines in the form of “penalties” that can cover their own blunders and mismanagement. There is no fair, easily accessible recourse.

Since thanks to Dalton life in Ontario will be more expensive, some businesses like restaurants and their food servers, and real estate, will suffer greatly and out of proportion. Everything with but a few exceptions will be 8% more expensive.

And the harsh fists of the federal taxocrats will grow tighter around more of our throats.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Canada’s tax regimen could be made more sensible; less bureaucratic and mysterious. Rather than torturing our citizens and enriching accountants, how about making it tougher for big business to squirm out of paying its fair share?

How about charging a proper fee for the multinationals that pump out our water to export and sell back to us in bottles? You can think of plenty more “how abouts?”

If Dalton has done anything good in all this, it’s in getting us to focus on how nasty and unfair the taxocracy is in this country. Maybe that can be an impetus for correction and change.

But he’s still a dope.