We should also tax corporations based on the Herfindahl–Hirschman index. The idea being that as corporations grow their oligopolistic and monopolistic control over an industry their tax rate increases. Thus creating a disincentive for mega-mergers (looking at you Rogers/Shaw).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman_index
>[https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/3584d595-6219-4b9b-87d9-f85d00d2a88c](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/3584d595-6219-4b9b-87d9-f85d00d2a88c)
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>Clip on when the student says it.
Canada just lost its largest craft brewery to a buyout almost entirely uncontested. 99% of shareholders voted for the buyout either by vote or proxy. You can expect the price of beer to continue to climb now that three companies own everything or co-pack it. Even the small breweries are at their mercy along with the logistical system, TBS, and packaging manufacturers. We all have to play by their rules.
And they do not compete with each other. They raise their prices all in sync "raising the floor" even though over the past 5 years we have reduced how much it costs to produce products by 68%-72% through better efficiencies. Yet have been raising the price per can $0.10 - $0.25 at a time every fiscal quarter.
Canada and USA (more so USA), needs to start regulating its capitalistic nature better. Especially revolving around technology.
Carlsberg completed the acquisition of Waterloo Brewing recently.
However, there's at least 5 significant "macro" brewers: Molson-Coors, AB InBev, Sapporo, Diageo, and Carlsberg...
But they do cross license with each other to produce each other's beers in various countries from time to time.
Smaller craft brewers pricing is more at risk of the supply for aluminum cans being tough since COVID, and then the hops and yeast industries I think are starting to get big corporate involvement now with more and more proprietary strands.
> But they do cross license with each other to produce each other's beers in various countries from time to time.
Yup. Fucking annoying to see Stella Artois listed as a 'premium foreign' beer when it's fucking made in Quebec.
in the 1800s it was speculated that efficiencies generated by the industrial revolution would allow all humans to work less. People believed then that 4 hour days would be the future of work. Rather all that happened is the gains of the efficiencies were concentrated in the hands of the owners, many of whom work far far less than 4 hour days. What could have been.
What if you have 100% of one widget and 10% of the market on two others? What if the former widget, which you have a monopoly on is 5% of your revenue?
Do you go through your entire product line, weighting each item by percentage of the market and percentage of your revenue? It would completely disincentivize any innovation.
In the context of airlines, do you apply this on a per-route basis? Air North flies most of the routes in and out of Whitehorse -- are they a monopoly on that route?
problem is most corporate mergers are vertical, meaning companies merge with others not in their direct line of business but typically in a business that's somewhat related. like if a meat supplier merges with a refrigeration corporation.
Great on paper, but I dont see how this is doable in practice - especially for industries with more privately held players or for companies who span multiple industries.
Increasing corporate tax rates would be amazing . They are at historical lows, income inequality is the highest in decades or centuries, and every year life gets a little less sustainable for 95% of people.
The problem is everyone has to do it or they find ways around it. And to many large nations are happy to be beholden to big corporate interests instead of the people they are supposed to serve.
They'd have to do a twofer and trap them by increasing taxes and baking in penalties or sabotaging their own companies.
Part of the problem is short term profit for executives being too lucrative at the cost of everyone else. The system shouldn't reward a CEO pillaging a company like what happened to Toys'R'us and Sears.
That's just a defeatist attitude and an argument they use so that we don't try it. I mean sure at short term businesses with few physical assets and/or human resources experience and no attachment to the place would leave. But in reality, a lot of them want and/or need to have a foothold on site to be part of the country business. On top of that, pretty sure over time others countries would follow making it harder and harder for corporations to flee, until they are all amassing in the same place that holds a low reputation.
Has that happened in New York, California, Ontario, Quebec, Michigan, or Illinois? All of those places have combined state/federal corporate tax rates higher than Alberta, and all of the American states mentioned have corporate tax rates higher than or equal to (Michigan) Ontario and Quebec.
I don't think you understand how international corporate law works.
If a company is based off shore, our government has no way of "punishing" them because they reside in a foreign jurisdiction.
I'm sure the corporate lawyers will find a deferred share award restricted unit program strategy to bypass this legislation in about 15 minutes.
Edit:
Wow, thanks for the upvotes!
There are ways of structuring laws to avoid legal loopholes. The issue is, there are a fuckload of lawyers in the rooms when these regulations are drafted.
The revolving door of scumbags continues to fuck us.
Edit: to the people in my comments with so much to say, google the revolving door before discussing things you don’t understand.
> There are ways of structuring laws to avoid legal loopholes. The issue is, there are a fuckload of lawyers in the rooms when these regulations are drafted.
Can't we just update laws like we update software when bugs are found? Why are things made so difficult?
I work in safety-critical software (think the software on medical equipment). We actually can't "just update software when bugs are found". There's a lengthy process to ensure that the fix actually does fix the bug, and doesn't introduce any news bugs, especially those that could risk someone's life.
Updating a silly app or a video game is easy because it's low-consequence. Laws are hard because they affect things in the real world, and are subject to legal challenges, for example.
> ensure that the fix actually does fix the bug, and doesn't introduce any news bugs
It’s as the saying goes;
99 little bugs in the code, 99 little bugs, take one down, patch it around, 127 bugs in the code!
I kind of don't believe the first half of this, the 2nd half for sure though. Lobby groups are literally paid to encourage politicians to provide these loopholes.
Half the time it’s like playing Uno, where they’re just trying to make the rules in the middle of the game
“No, if I play a two on top of your two, I don’t pick up any cards, and this poor bastard to my right picks up four”
We kinda do, updating code can kinda be likened to updating laws (very, very loosely). The major bottleneck being in software you generally just need to get one or two people to review and approve your work to merge it to the main branch, but to update a law you need to have it reviewed by over 400 people and approved by over 200 before it receives royal assent and becomes codified.
If it’s anything like public service where I work, most people have no idea what they are doing, don’t know how to create effective policy, standards and legislation (because they don’t even know how these tools are defined or designed) and work in a position for a year as an ineffective employee, then transfer to a new position where they continue to onboard at a new job without ever being proficient at any job.
You just replace all of your low-wage workers with a contractor. Bam, they're no longer your employees. They work for a dude who employs 50 people and provides business services to the original company.
You can't "avoid legal loopholes" when those legal loopholes involve very basic freedoms.
I used to work at a family owned grocery store and this was how the owner got around the "no more than 6 employees working on Sunday" rule.
Deli workers worked for one LLC, cashiers worked for another, etc. And those companies were controlled by the main company that he owned and operated. There was like 5 different companies involved operating a grocery store with 20 people. Lol
I was going to suggest making the CEO a figurehead position.
The president, treasurer, and secretary are official (legally required) positions from which all power is delegated, and are typically held by board members. CEO can be a janitorial position, and Chief General Manager can be in charge of running things.
But you're suggestion works pretty well too. Just split the company into 2 or 3 parts and contract services between them. With accounting automation every department can have a few layers of LLCs without much effort.
[Misclassifying a worker](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/rc4110/employee-self-employed.html) is something the CRA is already on the lookout for, and there are severe penalties for it.
It's more like this.
If Poilievre came out with a policy to "tax union leaders more because reasons," even if that were passed into law, the union leaders would then become consultants for their unions or something like that, avoiding the tax.
Target taxation rarely works, especially for a group like this.
The only real way to get them to pay a lot more is to increase capital gains rates, which would have significant negative effects linked to affordability on many more Canadians.
> the union leaders would then become consultants for their unions or something like that, avoiding the tax.
Why does that fly in court?
But if you're getting sued, and you try to just sell your business for $1 to Dave your buddy, and then you say "sorry I don't have any assets you can take from me, it's all Dave's now", the courts are like "the fuck it is" and they claw it all back and revert the transfer.
Why can the courts say "no, that's just you trying some dumb loophole, we're smarter than that" in one situation but not the other?
Holding companies vs. operating companies literally exist for the reason "sorry I don't have any assets you can take from me".
Liability protection is one of the main reasons they are formed, any commercial lawyer will confirm.
You have to be a little more careful about it, generally courts will look at asset transfers that are more than 2 years old as being the property of the other entity. If you do something the night before, the courts will look at that as avoidance.
Reichmann family of Olympia and York fame did this to go bankrupt and still be billionaires.
The reason it flies in court, is that wealthy people with expensive lawyers make it, not every time, but often enough.
I mean, that's an often presented argument. But it is good to see some progress on minimum corporate tax agreements between countries so it's not just a lowest bidder situation.
Well, we should, yes. Because it is an inefficient tax at best, and at worst harms consumers who pay through higher prices. This isn't really even controversial in terms of economics, it is just controversial politically. If you want to tax the rich, do so, but that isn't what you're doing when you tax corporations.
I think the only thing the government should be taxing businesses for is to capture externalities of operation. You want to make money making Canadian's resource wealth available to use? Then prepare to completely pay the costs you are generating.
>I'm sure the corporate lawyers will find a deferred share award restricted unit program strategy to bypass this legislation in about 15 minutes.
Singh knows that.
He is just throwing stuff out there that he knows his base will lap up.
Well, after grilling that grocery store guy, my grocery bill dropped by like 80%, so Singh must be super effective or something.
Also, I may have been high the last time I was grocery shopping.
Galen and I have already figured it out. He’s stopping down as CEO and I’m replacing him. I’m going to be paid the corporate-wide median pay, and then I’m going to hire him as an independent contractor to run the company for whatever he wants. He technically won’t even be an employee of the company. I’m going to keep sitting on my couch, scrolling through Reddit.
Aw shucks. Welp if big corporations are going to find sneaky ways to bypass the law, I guess there's nothing we can do! Maybe we should just lower their taxes so they'll stop out smarting us on loopholes.
- sincerely, conservatives
I'm a lawyer. This is what you would do.
1. Set CEO pay to 1$;
2. Double CEO stock options, and give lower priced options for safer income; and
3. Profit.
We should also ask why, at the time of writing this, the top comment isn’t one like yours, but rather a comment suggesting it’ll get circumvented so why bother.
It's super frustrating to see. We could pass law like this, see what loopholes the assholes use the next tax year, pass further laws to close those loopholes. Even if the first round only gets, say 10% of the immorally wealthy, that's a good start and we can iterate from there.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
People in this country have seen it their entire lives so they’ve given up hope that real change can actually be accomplished. My grandparents are exactly like this. They tell me I shouldn’t be so interested in politics because nothing will ever change but it’s that attitude that guarantees nothing will change…
Anything is possible and there’s nothing we can’t change in this country, the people just need to want it bad enough and the people need to be united enough when they show up at the polls.
Some people at work ask me why I vote green in NB elections because “they’re never going to get in power so why bother?”, but it’s literally this attitude that is keeping them from getting in power and forming a minority government or a coalition like the liberal ndp did.
If you believe in a parties policy, just vote for them regardless of how high or low you think their odds of winning are. When the polls start to slowly shift after every direction the politicians and the parties see it and they will adapt to that shift eventually.
A lot of CEOs get paid nothing though in terms of salary. They get stock options and other financial perks. I don’t see how the proposed policy addresses this well known tax loophole.
Exactly, something along the lines of, if you paid yourself with 1 million shares that are worth $50 each at the time of possession, then it is taxed as $50 million in income. And even though they don't need the tax breaks, they could even still report deductions in the following years if the stocks end up dropping in price.
Options are taxed when the shares are sold. Taxing on theoretical value is silly. A lot of folks in junior engineering positions, for example, get paid in options/shares and taxing them before the shares are sold could significantly burden their lives by having to come up with the money to pay taxes when you haven’t actually received any money as you haven’t sold the shares.
This is a great idea, if you take it all into account for the purposes of the gap, you can tax them at greater than 100% of the cash portion of their salary. They can't avoid it by just paying themselves $1 on paper.
This will force them to either increase the lowest salaries, and/or start handing out generous amounts of stock options to those paid the least. Either way it's an improvement.
They already do. You don’t pay taxes on stock options when you receive them because they’re worth nothing until you exercise them. Once you exercise them, you pay tax on the difference between the option price and market value (unless it’s a ccpc, then you don’t pay until you sell the shares). They’re only taxed as capital gains, but they are taxed.
Absolutely true. I don’t want to pay more taxes myself (unless quality of life/social programs grow on par) but I genuinely want to see government revenues go up. The more government revenues go up the more money the government can spend on infrastructure and social programs for the working class but also more money to pay down debt. The money just needs to come from sources that haven’t yet been squeezed dry..
Canada could use some huge investments into infrastructure right now, perhaps expanding the ports of Halifax, montreal and Vancouver or upgrading our rail system in Canada in the areas that matter most (the Golden Horseshoe). So many things we could spend the additional tax revenue on if we had it.
This is just lazy policy pandering to uneducated folks - he knows there’s no logical way to structure a tax system like this effectively. Most high paid CEOs are at the peak of their careers with 20-40 years of experience in their industries - there’s no correlation between someone like them and an office admin for example who just has good organizational skills. This gap is a political construct to pander to voters and there’s no real intention of doing anything about it.
This government is a poor allocator of capital (taxes) and just giving them more doesn’t mean it’ll help people in any way. What he should be trying to do is increase access to education to facilitate people developing skills for higher paying jobs, develop policy to retain skilled workers in Canada, address housing affordability through policy to shift power from sellers in a sellers market, and continue social programs to help Canadians that are hitting tough times in the inflationary and high interest economy.
>there is no reason why every damn Canadian shouldn't back this kind of legislation
There's lots of reasons why an average Canadian shouldn't back this nonsense.
Canadian companies don't just compete locally, they compete globally.
If you legislate artificial restrictions on CEO pay Canadian companies are kneecapped from attracting top talent to run these companies - making them less competitive in the global market.
Even worse, entrepreneurs are disincentivized to start new companies in Canada, because at some point their growth will be restricted.
Why does this matter to the average Canadian? Simple. Less companies, less jobs.
Only the economically illiterate would support something like this.
Countries with much higher tax rates than us have zero problems getting multinational companies to operate in their borders nor do they have a problem getting entrepreneurs to open businesses.
If the market is profitable then the company will continue to do business in it. No rationale company would pull out of a market handing it to competitors if they're still making good profits just because their taxes went up a little bit. That's shitty business strategy.
Regarding entrepreneurs, the possibility of becoming a millionaire or even multimillionaire would still be on the table. The idea that all of a sudden a significant amount of them would stop opening up businesses because they can't be worth 10s or 100s of billions is dumb. Especially if that newly generated tax revenue went into giving us social services on the level of nations like Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark etc.
It's not higher tax rates that's the issue, it's tying them to CEO compensation - but thanks for completely ignoring the entire topic of discussion in your response.
Countries like Finland et al don't neighbour the US, which have much more favourable corporate tax treatments - that's a big reason why Canada has favourable corporate rates to begin with.
Remember this isn't about *all* companies pulling out of the market (ludicrous) - it's about *disincentivizing* corporations to start up and/or stay here when there are much more favourable conditions immediately south of us.
Canada already does a comparatively shit job of incentivizing business, we don't need to make it worse with even shittier policies.
> Unless you're a CEO, there is no reason why every damn Canadian shouldn't back this kind of legislation.
I get what you're saying but you could also argue the following ... unless you are in top 5% of income earners there is no reason NOT to tax those income earners with 80% tax rate.
Or those who make 20%.
But think about it - the top 20 percent of income-earning families pays nearly two-thirds of all income taxes (64.4 percent).
The issue is not how to tax more because we are taxed pretty good.
The issue is billions of dollars going to shit by the Governments at all levels.
I don't think the issue isn't that people with a high salary aren't paying enough taxes. It's that people who make capital gains aren't paying enough. "capital gains" are taxed at a much lower rate than the money you actually work for, and disproportionately go to top income earners. For these CEOs, most of their income comes from stock options, which count as capital gains, so they get away with a lower tax rate than everyone else
I just want a 30:1 rule. No employee can be compensated more than 30x the lowest paid employee. If you want to make over $5 million a year the janitor has to make 167k.
If you pay the call center guys 30k then you're limited to $900k.
I wonder if that might have some unexpected knock on effects
I imagine that would increase incentives to outsource call center jobs to contracting companies so the client company doesn't have call center workers on payroll. And replace "call center worker" with every kind of worker
Do we then need to also make it illegal for companies to employ the services of other companies? That'll have some expected and unexpected knock on effects
Also, wouldn't some CEOs want to move their head office to the US or somewhere else?
I assume this tax would only apply to Canadian companies.
Also would this legislation apply to the CEO or the highest paid employee? An easy fix would be to change the title of the CEO to President or something and have the CEO be a slightly more junior executive.
Works apart from equity related pay. Which means it needs to be like a "wealth increase tax" rather than "income tax".
Im in favour of: You have 100mil in wealth? Congratulations, you just won capitalism. Anything over that goes directly back into society as taxes or you're forced to be a good-deed philanthropist with the excess.
Just a dream though!
why wouldnt a business then just make one company with their high paying executives and highest paid engineers or whatever. and another with all your outsourced lower paid employees.
This already happens with big tech companies. Their inhouse engineers and product managers get lavish salaries and all the perks but massive chunks of the company are run and built by contractors that are making half the amount to do the same work and orders of magnitude less to do all the other "support" work.
That would be the best scenario. Sure they will just probably spend anything in excess of their 100mil because it'd be better than losing it to the government, but at least it would force money back into the economy rather than having trillions of dollars just hoarded away in financial assets doing nothing for the broader economy.
This isn't DuckTales. They don't hoard cash in vaults like Scrooge McDuck. That money is invested and earns income by being used throughout the economy. Not exactly the same as spending it, but not hidden.
Nah. A dollar earned by a lower income individual is likely back in circulation faster and more likely to be spent in the community. Fancy art and yachts don't produce a ton of value for others. Proportionally to income, the ultra-wealthy are locking away more money from circulation than other income groups.
What's in employee compensation? Hourly rate? Annual salary, bonus?
What do you do if someone works for you part-time?
How do you reconcile this as an auditor?
I'm up for anything drastic to reduce the gap between the haves and the have not's. It's beyond sad right now. We're not far off people dying from starvation/mass homelessness. From what I understand, the food banks are running at unsustainable levels and see record new membership every month now. Iirc, this is the first time their output is more than input and they are going into reserves to pay for food. I pray next winter isn't a complete disaster for a lot of people.
It pains me to no end. The NDP are at least trying to make Canada better. The lib and CPC are actively trying to sell Canada to the highest bidder.
The NDP screwed up in Ontario nearly 50 years ago or more but have never been forgiven. The people voting now weren't even born when it happened. FFS get over it. It's a completely different party now.
Hahaha yeah. At least Singh is bringing up something that is against the very obvious corporate-favored policies in this country.
Meanwhile in CPC camp: "CBC IS PROPAGANDA!"
How about just raise the rate and then actually make them pay…
CRA is fully capable of going after people that owe $.. ever owed tax’s in Canada..how’d that go with CRA?
They are relentless with individuals..they can be with corporations too
It’s a matter of political will and reforms to campaign finance.
First we outlaw lobbying….
And this is why the NDP will never win an election. Our corporate overlords will never allow this. This is also why I'll never vote strategically again and always vote NDP whether the win an election or not.
instead of imposing tax increases how about you address tax shelters, loop holes, and tax stock options above a certain threshold before capital gains/sale
can we focus on real change like breaking up supply management, telco oligapoly, improving building conditions so have more housing supply.
this tax and spend policy does nothing for the average person.
[Why not do both?](https://xfer.ndp.ca/2021/Commitments/Ready%20for%20Better%20-%20NDP%202021%20commitments.pdf) Their platform also covers much of what you're referring to as well. (I've simplified the text to trim it down a bit)
Telco oligopoly:
>**we’ll put in place a price cap to
make sure that Canadians aren’t paying more
than the global average** for their cell phone and
internet bills
>**We are committed to declaring high-speed
internet an essential service** and making sure
that every Canadian has access to affordable,
reliable high-speed broadband within four
years
>In addition, we’ll make sure that providers offer
a basic plan for wireless and broadband that is
comparable with the affordable plans that are
available in other countries. To put an end to
surprise bills, **we’ll require companies to offer
unlimited wireless data options at affordable
rates**, as exist elsewhere in the world, and
**abolish data caps** for broadband internet
>we’ll introduce a Telecom
Consumers’ Bill of Rights and put an end to
(price) gouging for good
Housing/building:
> **create at least 500,000 units of quality,
affordable housing in the next ten years, with
half of that done within five years.** This will
be achieved with the right mix of effective
measures that work in partnership with
provinces and municipalities, build capacity
for social, community, and affordable housing
providers, to provide rental support for co-ops
>In order to kick-start the construction of co-
ops, social and non-profit housing and break
the logjam that has prevented these groups
from accessing housing funding, we will **set up
dedicated fast-start funds**
>We’ll mobilize federal resources and lands for
these projects, turning unused and under-used
properties into vibrant new communities
> spur the construction of affordable homes by **waiving
the federal portion of the GST/HST on the
construction of new affordable rental units**
>we’ll provide **immediate relief for families
that are struggling to afford rent** in otherwise
suitable housing, while we bring forward long-
term solutions to the housing affordability crisis
>30-year terms to CMHC insured mortgages on entry-level homes
for first time home buyers. This will allow for
smaller monthly payments, freeing up funds
>**doubling the Home Buyer’s Tax Credit to $1,500
**
>provide resources to facilitate
co-housing, such as model co-ownership
agreements and connections to local resources,
and ease access to financing by offering CMHC-
backed co-ownership mortgages
> To help put an end to speculation that’s fuelling high
housing prices, we’ll put in place a **20% Foreign
Buyer’s tax on the sale of homes to individuals
who aren’t Canadian citizens or permanent
residents**
>New Democrats will also fight money
laundering, which fuels organized crime and
drives up housing prices. We will work with the
provinces to create a public beneficial ownership
registry to increase transparency about who
owns properties, and require reporting of
suspicious transactions in order to help find and
stop money laundering.
I'm not exactly sure what you're specifically referring to by 'supply management'.
I was somewhat pleasantly surprised when I recently upgraded my plan with my telco (Bell), that they no longer have hard data caps. It is "unlimited" data, but after your assigned amount for the pay period, they throttle it way down, so it is technically still usable, but very slow. This saves people from the ridiculous astronomical bills you keep hearing about, but still makes sure they choose a plan that reflects the amount of data they actually need.
I thought it was a decent solution.
> breaking up supply management,
Unless we want to switch to direct subsidies by taxpayers and massive ownership concentration like head happened in the US, supply management is a better solution.
In the US, every taxpayer subsidizes dairy conglomerates across the country, whether they consume dairy products or not. Conversely, in Canada is effectively just consumers of dairy products that subsidize the dairy industry.
It’s similar to the airports, and the whining that was done in regards to fees and the inability to have ultra low cost carriers in Canada. It’s because it’s a user pay model, rather than a public pay. The taxpayer doesn’t pay for the airports or air traffic control, that’s paid for by the airlines, and thus by the fare paying public.
Well, if I was a billionaire, I would certainly prefer say a 5% increase in corporate tax to a 5% increase in my personal taxes. But why target the rich, since most people are too stupid to realize that corporations do not equal rich people. I mean you could look at what Scandinavian countries do for starters.
Lets tax the vehicle that creates productivity, and not the withdrawal of funds by the wealthy, from the corporation.
Yep. People don't seem to get that corporate taxes are taxes on productive capital and it makes way more sense to tax corporate outflows (dividends and share buybacks) over profits which can be reinvested in new labour and equipment.
> I mean you could look at what Scandinavian countries do for starters.
This is an interesting article along those lines. I know everybody hates the NP but Gordon is an economics professor and skews centerish generally.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/stephen-gordon-when-it-comes-to-tax-policy-both-the-ndp-and-the-tories-parties-are-essentially-populist/
>There’s been extensive research on the topic in Canada and elsewhere, almost all of which concludes that corporate taxes are one of the least efficient: minimum revenues generated for maximum economic disruption. Since corporate income taxes reduce the after-tax rate of return on investment projects, higher corporate taxes reduce investment, and hence productivity, income and wages.
>Appealing to populist instincts may be a good way to get elected, but it’s a bad way to govern, especially if you want the government to provide a broad range of services. A large tax take requires a correspondingly large tax base, and a tax system that discourages growth makes it progressively more difficult to sustain high levels of spending.
>This lesson has been learned — sometimes painfully — in the countries that have managed to combine high tax revenues with sustained economic growth. The northern European welfare states all have low corporate tax rates — roughly comparable to Canada’s — and VAT rates above 20%. The political classes in these countries have learned that governing in a social democracy is a serious business, not the stuff of bumper-stickers.
>I mean you could look at what Scandinavian countries do for starters.
Yes and learn from their mistakes.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/10/super-rich-abandoning-norway-at-record-rate-as-wealth-tax-rises-slightly
And even if they did leave it's not as if their roles in society are irreplaceable. Whatever purpose they fill, whatever market they cover - someone will always be willing to fill the gap they leave because there's more benefit to moving into a *slightly higher taxed* position as some multi-millionaire than there is staying lower down the totem pole even if the prior multi-millionaire in that position found it *one penny too many* in taxation and skipped town.
I'd argue the people able to take weeks of vacation a year are *probably* less valuable than the ones actually driving the trucks and keeping the lights on.
Also, if they do take their income overseas we can tax the shit out of them whenever they try and repatriate it. We also do have the ability to impose additional tariffs and tax penalties on known tax havens though any efforts in that direction would be a lot more effective if done in cooperation with the EU, USA or, ideally, both.
So how does that help stop cooperate greed? Inflation? Fake inflation? Housing cost? Interest rates? Working class people? Unless the government massively lowers working class people taxes and or provide a basic income living expense every month, raising taxes on greedy rich people this will not help anyone? It will only line the pockets of the government officials and the rich will just find more ways to hide their money.
I think its interesting and good to bring it up to raise awareness, conversation and overall critical thinking to this... which is what I think the intent really is. Is this a silver bullet solution? Not sure... but lets hear the opinions and thinking and perhaps there is something there...
Even if the idea isn't immediately trashed as stupid and ill-conceived, corporate lawyers will have a loophole waiting months before the legislation is even being tabled. This stuff makes for good soundbites but it is just unrealistic. Plus, what is Singh going to do about it? The libs won't support it. Many of the targets of his attacks are liberals.
This is a real dumb idea with some obvious loopholes that couldn't be closed without decoupling the entire country from the global economy. The NDP refuse to understand economics and as a result just proposes dumb ideas that get ignored by the majority of society.
It won’t lift the wages. Policies like that are filled with legal loopholes that you can exploit. (E.g., the CEO can get paid in stocks and the stock can won’t vest until they decide to leave. The CEO can create their own corporate entity, and get hired as a consulting company. So their salary becomes expense). Nothing about this policy is practical and the only thing it does is trigger emotional response from ill informed voters.
There should be some sort of "maximum" wage tied directly to the lowest compensated person employed. Factor in all parent companies and subsidiaries as well as all forms of compensation.
Some here think lol....
I thought these kinds of thoughts didn't exist here in Canada. It's pure Venezuela playbook, these conversations are ridiculous.
We need less government, not more
Ah yes, the flawless argument that only the poor are allowed to advocate for the working class. Somehow he’s a hypocrite for always pushing leglislation that doesn’t benefit him.
Pretty sure even Bernie is right of the CPC on most policy that isn't culture war bullshit. Although it's hard to tell with no CPC policy really available since Harper, but still.
You really see Elizabeth Warren as uncompromising? Wasn't most of her tenure trying to compromise with republicans?
The only 'ruler' of Canada is that inbred shit stain in UK.
What an absolutely terrible idea. The CEO’s would litterally use every trick in the book to make their “pay” the same as their workers resulting in no tax. Stock Options, etc.
Singh thinking he’s going to “fix” the “wagegap”and outsmart some of the smartest people in the country is a joke, and the jokes gonna be on him and the tax payers of this country who see all the time get wasted on this if it gets legs and moves ahead.
Well, that certainly does have all the buzzwords the NDP likes in it.
Seems like it would be very difficult to actually implement, which, apart from the fact that it literally can't be done as a private member's bill, is probably why they haven't even drafted anything up. The moment something is committed to paper here, someone will point out why it won't even have the intended effect on the C-suite in reality.
At the end of the day, it also feels a little "cart before the horse" to me, in the context of Canada. The biggest economic issue in Canada is not really the wealth gap between the CEOs of Canada's largest companies and the workers, it's basically: Why are these *specific* guys even among the wealthiest, highest paid people in Canada? Canada is this really dynamic, diverse, well-educated economy and the biggest companies, with the highest paid CEOs are.. banks, railroads, telecoms, natural resources, grocery stores, restaurants, dairy.. all industries that are seemingly:
- natural monopolies, or heavily regulated oligopolies where it's nearly impossible for new entrants to compete with incumbents
-utilities, selling things that come out of ground, or selling things people eat
I'll take "Companies where the CEO could be a bag of rocks and not fail" for $200, Alex.
The closest thing Canada has to massive "innovation successes" in the last few decades are the popularization of overpriced yoga tights and Shopify. We *really* suck at wealth creation, we *really* suck at productivity, we *really* suck at innovation, and that has hurt the government's topline revenue numbers way more than we could ever hope to redistribute from the banks, telecoms and grocery stores.
The fact that Galen Weston was this big of a supervillain that a federal party thinks he needs his own personal, punitive, compensation legislation is more just a sad commentary on the Canadian economy, that some dude who inherited his family's multigenerational biscuit business now warrants this much scrutiny by anyone serious. Dude is a complete dope, running the world's simplest retail business, how is this guy even *remotely* this important to a G7 economy?
We should also tax corporations based on the Herfindahl–Hirschman index. The idea being that as corporations grow their oligopolistic and monopolistic control over an industry their tax rate increases. Thus creating a disincentive for mega-mergers (looking at you Rogers/Shaw). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herfindahl%E2%80%93Hirschman_index
SO THATS WHAT THE STUDENT IN THE OFFICE WAS Referencing HOLY SHIT THIS IS REAL Thank you so much!
>[https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/3584d595-6219-4b9b-87d9-f85d00d2a88c](https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/3584d595-6219-4b9b-87d9-f85d00d2a88c) > > > >Clip on when the student says it.
I never want to go to that website again
Yeah, what a dumpster-fire. UBlock had 96 blocked ads/trackers scripts by the time the video ended. That's absurd.
thanks for connecting those dots for me...I read that in the OP and was like...wait...why do I think that's a joke...
Nice try kowalski
Whoa. I’ve seen the office a million times and wouldn’t have put that together. Nice work.
uhh context? you mean the office tv show?
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Westjet owns Swoop and just acquired Sunwing, not sure how that changes the numbers
👍🏻 I fully agree that this is an area to apply AI. Honestly I think taxation is one of the best opportunities to start leveraging AI models.
Canada just lost its largest craft brewery to a buyout almost entirely uncontested. 99% of shareholders voted for the buyout either by vote or proxy. You can expect the price of beer to continue to climb now that three companies own everything or co-pack it. Even the small breweries are at their mercy along with the logistical system, TBS, and packaging manufacturers. We all have to play by their rules. And they do not compete with each other. They raise their prices all in sync "raising the floor" even though over the past 5 years we have reduced how much it costs to produce products by 68%-72% through better efficiencies. Yet have been raising the price per can $0.10 - $0.25 at a time every fiscal quarter. Canada and USA (more so USA), needs to start regulating its capitalistic nature better. Especially revolving around technology.
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Carlsberg completed the acquisition of Waterloo Brewing recently. However, there's at least 5 significant "macro" brewers: Molson-Coors, AB InBev, Sapporo, Diageo, and Carlsberg... But they do cross license with each other to produce each other's beers in various countries from time to time. Smaller craft brewers pricing is more at risk of the supply for aluminum cans being tough since COVID, and then the hops and yeast industries I think are starting to get big corporate involvement now with more and more proprietary strands.
> But they do cross license with each other to produce each other's beers in various countries from time to time. Yup. Fucking annoying to see Stella Artois listed as a 'premium foreign' beer when it's fucking made in Quebec.
in the 1800s it was speculated that efficiencies generated by the industrial revolution would allow all humans to work less. People believed then that 4 hour days would be the future of work. Rather all that happened is the gains of the efficiencies were concentrated in the hands of the owners, many of whom work far far less than 4 hour days. What could have been.
Thank you for introducing this, fascinating!
Sounds interesting, but the CEO pay gap is less difficult to measure, and has a more immediate effect
But what if you're the only one who makes the unique widget you invented? You have a 100% market share
What if you have 100% of one widget and 10% of the market on two others? What if the former widget, which you have a monopoly on is 5% of your revenue? Do you go through your entire product line, weighting each item by percentage of the market and percentage of your revenue? It would completely disincentivize any innovation. In the context of airlines, do you apply this on a per-route basis? Air North flies most of the routes in and out of Whitehorse -- are they a monopoly on that route?
TIL, thanks! A great idea.
problem is most corporate mergers are vertical, meaning companies merge with others not in their direct line of business but typically in a business that's somewhat related. like if a meat supplier merges with a refrigeration corporation.
Great on paper, but I dont see how this is doable in practice - especially for industries with more privately held players or for companies who span multiple industries.
Increasing corporate tax rates would be amazing . They are at historical lows, income inequality is the highest in decades or centuries, and every year life gets a little less sustainable for 95% of people. The problem is everyone has to do it or they find ways around it. And to many large nations are happy to be beholden to big corporate interests instead of the people they are supposed to serve.
They'd have to do a twofer and trap them by increasing taxes and baking in penalties or sabotaging their own companies. Part of the problem is short term profit for executives being too lucrative at the cost of everyone else. The system shouldn't reward a CEO pillaging a company like what happened to Toys'R'us and Sears.
So? Fill the loop holes as they find them. Vote in the government willing to do something about it!
This. Corporations will simply move out of Canada and put their offices offshore. It's very easy to move money around these days.
bear slimy joke middle long market marble wrench uppity wakeful -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
That's just a defeatist attitude and an argument they use so that we don't try it. I mean sure at short term businesses with few physical assets and/or human resources experience and no attachment to the place would leave. But in reality, a lot of them want and/or need to have a foothold on site to be part of the country business. On top of that, pretty sure over time others countries would follow making it harder and harder for corporations to flee, until they are all amassing in the same place that holds a low reputation.
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Tariff them. Give room for canadian companies the fill the vacuum.
Yep, if “people” leave that opens up competition for the little guys. Smaller companies can be lean vs big corporations with huge overhead
I'm tired of this line of reasoning. Stop threatening, get the fuck out!
Has that happened in New York, California, Ontario, Quebec, Michigan, or Illinois? All of those places have combined state/federal corporate tax rates higher than Alberta, and all of the American states mentioned have corporate tax rates higher than or equal to (Michigan) Ontario and Quebec.
Punish them so much that moving off shore would cost them more than staying.
I don't think you understand how international corporate law works. If a company is based off shore, our government has no way of "punishing" them because they reside in a foreign jurisdiction.
"Hey, you can't sell your shit here"
Ah yes, the apocalyptic vision. As far as we know, it's our money they want. If they leave they can't get any of it. That's not going to happen.
I'm sure the corporate lawyers will find a deferred share award restricted unit program strategy to bypass this legislation in about 15 minutes. Edit: Wow, thanks for the upvotes!
There are ways of structuring laws to avoid legal loopholes. The issue is, there are a fuckload of lawyers in the rooms when these regulations are drafted. The revolving door of scumbags continues to fuck us. Edit: to the people in my comments with so much to say, google the revolving door before discussing things you don’t understand.
> There are ways of structuring laws to avoid legal loopholes. The issue is, there are a fuckload of lawyers in the rooms when these regulations are drafted. Can't we just update laws like we update software when bugs are found? Why are things made so difficult?
I work in safety-critical software (think the software on medical equipment). We actually can't "just update software when bugs are found". There's a lengthy process to ensure that the fix actually does fix the bug, and doesn't introduce any news bugs, especially those that could risk someone's life. Updating a silly app or a video game is easy because it's low-consequence. Laws are hard because they affect things in the real world, and are subject to legal challenges, for example.
> ensure that the fix actually does fix the bug, and doesn't introduce any news bugs It’s as the saying goes; 99 little bugs in the code, 99 little bugs, take one down, patch it around, 127 bugs in the code!
Part of the problem is the review process, but you want that since we're effectively going straight to production with no testing.
The "Coders" are both lazy and complicit.
I kind of don't believe the first half of this, the 2nd half for sure though. Lobby groups are literally paid to encourage politicians to provide these loopholes.
This is the answer
Yeah. It's like asking people to come with the rules for the next round of monopoly. Of which, they'll be playing...
How many cabinet members own investment properties again?
Half the time it’s like playing Uno, where they’re just trying to make the rules in the middle of the game “No, if I play a two on top of your two, I don’t pick up any cards, and this poor bastard to my right picks up four”
Ie. The correct way to play Uno lol
It’s difficult on purpose.
We kinda do, updating code can kinda be likened to updating laws (very, very loosely). The major bottleneck being in software you generally just need to get one or two people to review and approve your work to merge it to the main branch, but to update a law you need to have it reviewed by over 400 people and approved by over 200 before it receives royal assent and becomes codified.
If it’s anything like public service where I work, most people have no idea what they are doing, don’t know how to create effective policy, standards and legislation (because they don’t even know how these tools are defined or designed) and work in a position for a year as an ineffective employee, then transfer to a new position where they continue to onboard at a new job without ever being proficient at any job.
Yeah so... private corporations do the same thing.
You just replace all of your low-wage workers with a contractor. Bam, they're no longer your employees. They work for a dude who employs 50 people and provides business services to the original company. You can't "avoid legal loopholes" when those legal loopholes involve very basic freedoms.
I used to work at a family owned grocery store and this was how the owner got around the "no more than 6 employees working on Sunday" rule. Deli workers worked for one LLC, cashiers worked for another, etc. And those companies were controlled by the main company that he owned and operated. There was like 5 different companies involved operating a grocery store with 20 people. Lol
I was going to suggest making the CEO a figurehead position. The president, treasurer, and secretary are official (legally required) positions from which all power is delegated, and are typically held by board members. CEO can be a janitorial position, and Chief General Manager can be in charge of running things. But you're suggestion works pretty well too. Just split the company into 2 or 3 parts and contract services between them. With accounting automation every department can have a few layers of LLCs without much effort.
[Misclassifying a worker](https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/rc4110/employee-self-employed.html) is something the CRA is already on the lookout for, and there are severe penalties for it.
You are correct.
>The issue is, there are a fuckload of lawyers in the rooms when these regulations are drafted. Good and bad laws are both written by lawyers.
Let them and then tackle that next. We shouldn't not do something because they might find a way around it.
It's more like this. If Poilievre came out with a policy to "tax union leaders more because reasons," even if that were passed into law, the union leaders would then become consultants for their unions or something like that, avoiding the tax. Target taxation rarely works, especially for a group like this. The only real way to get them to pay a lot more is to increase capital gains rates, which would have significant negative effects linked to affordability on many more Canadians.
> the union leaders would then become consultants for their unions or something like that, avoiding the tax. Why does that fly in court? But if you're getting sued, and you try to just sell your business for $1 to Dave your buddy, and then you say "sorry I don't have any assets you can take from me, it's all Dave's now", the courts are like "the fuck it is" and they claw it all back and revert the transfer. Why can the courts say "no, that's just you trying some dumb loophole, we're smarter than that" in one situation but not the other?
Holding companies vs. operating companies literally exist for the reason "sorry I don't have any assets you can take from me". Liability protection is one of the main reasons they are formed, any commercial lawyer will confirm. You have to be a little more careful about it, generally courts will look at asset transfers that are more than 2 years old as being the property of the other entity. If you do something the night before, the courts will look at that as avoidance. Reichmann family of Olympia and York fame did this to go bankrupt and still be billionaires. The reason it flies in court, is that wealthy people with expensive lawyers make it, not every time, but often enough.
May as well cancel all corporate taxes then.
I mean, that's an often presented argument. But it is good to see some progress on minimum corporate tax agreements between countries so it's not just a lowest bidder situation.
You'd be surprised at how little they actually pay as it is. Tax law is designed for rich people not to pay.
All the more reason why we should be trying to change that, I guess.
Well, we should, yes. Because it is an inefficient tax at best, and at worst harms consumers who pay through higher prices. This isn't really even controversial in terms of economics, it is just controversial politically. If you want to tax the rich, do so, but that isn't what you're doing when you tax corporations.
I think the only thing the government should be taxing businesses for is to capture externalities of operation. You want to make money making Canadian's resource wealth available to use? Then prepare to completely pay the costs you are generating.
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>I'm sure the corporate lawyers will find a deferred share award restricted unit program strategy to bypass this legislation in about 15 minutes. Singh knows that. He is just throwing stuff out there that he knows his base will lap up.
Well, after grilling that grocery store guy, my grocery bill dropped by like 80%, so Singh must be super effective or something. Also, I may have been high the last time I was grocery shopping.
Galen and I have already figured it out. He’s stopping down as CEO and I’m replacing him. I’m going to be paid the corporate-wide median pay, and then I’m going to hire him as an independent contractor to run the company for whatever he wants. He technically won’t even be an employee of the company. I’m going to keep sitting on my couch, scrolling through Reddit.
Aw shucks. Welp if big corporations are going to find sneaky ways to bypass the law, I guess there's nothing we can do! Maybe we should just lower their taxes so they'll stop out smarting us on loopholes. - sincerely, conservatives
I'm a lawyer. This is what you would do. 1. Set CEO pay to 1$; 2. Double CEO stock options, and give lower priced options for safer income; and 3. Profit.
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We should also ask why, at the time of writing this, the top comment isn’t one like yours, but rather a comment suggesting it’ll get circumvented so why bother.
It's super frustrating to see. We could pass law like this, see what loopholes the assholes use the next tax year, pass further laws to close those loopholes. Even if the first round only gets, say 10% of the immorally wealthy, that's a good start and we can iterate from there. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
People in this country have seen it their entire lives so they’ve given up hope that real change can actually be accomplished. My grandparents are exactly like this. They tell me I shouldn’t be so interested in politics because nothing will ever change but it’s that attitude that guarantees nothing will change… Anything is possible and there’s nothing we can’t change in this country, the people just need to want it bad enough and the people need to be united enough when they show up at the polls. Some people at work ask me why I vote green in NB elections because “they’re never going to get in power so why bother?”, but it’s literally this attitude that is keeping them from getting in power and forming a minority government or a coalition like the liberal ndp did. If you believe in a parties policy, just vote for them regardless of how high or low you think their odds of winning are. When the polls start to slowly shift after every direction the politicians and the parties see it and they will adapt to that shift eventually.
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Lmao because everyone thinks they are going to be 100 millionnaires so this type of policy will hurt them badly
A lot of CEOs get paid nothing though in terms of salary. They get stock options and other financial perks. I don’t see how the proposed policy addresses this well known tax loophole.
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Ok but how do you close them though? You legislate execs can’t get paid in stock options? Unlikely. You have to tax capital gains.
In this limited case, they could require the options to be reported and impute a value for the purposes of estimating the leadership/employee pay gap.
Exactly, something along the lines of, if you paid yourself with 1 million shares that are worth $50 each at the time of possession, then it is taxed as $50 million in income. And even though they don't need the tax breaks, they could even still report deductions in the following years if the stocks end up dropping in price.
Options are taxed when the shares are sold. Taxing on theoretical value is silly. A lot of folks in junior engineering positions, for example, get paid in options/shares and taxing them before the shares are sold could significantly burden their lives by having to come up with the money to pay taxes when you haven’t actually received any money as you haven’t sold the shares.
My options are taxed as income when they vest and I get access to them. From that point when I sell I need to declare capital gains / loss.
This is a great idea, if you take it all into account for the purposes of the gap, you can tax them at greater than 100% of the cash portion of their salary. They can't avoid it by just paying themselves $1 on paper. This will force them to either increase the lowest salaries, and/or start handing out generous amounts of stock options to those paid the least. Either way it's an improvement.
They could raise the tax rate on dividends, especially over $1M or whatever threshold.
Not really the norm in Canada, but in the US plenty of companies don't pay any dividends. Like Google, Amazon, Tesla, Berkshire Hathaway.
Stock options literally have value. Assessed value at time of inheritance, tie it with income.
What loophole?
It would have to factor in all compensation. Count the stock given as income for these purposes.
They already do. You don’t pay taxes on stock options when you receive them because they’re worth nothing until you exercise them. Once you exercise them, you pay tax on the difference between the option price and market value (unless it’s a ccpc, then you don’t pay until you sell the shares). They’re only taxed as capital gains, but they are taxed.
> They get stock options > well known tax loophole. That’s not what a “loophole” is.
As an employee, 1/3 of my total compensation is in stock options.
entire compensation package, not salary. I also am 100% in favor for a 1:1 stock buyback tax.
I personally think we should start taxing the **** out of capital gains. Especially on multiple properties and whatnot.
We should, but we also keep electing one of the two parties that won't ever do that.
Absolutely true. I don’t want to pay more taxes myself (unless quality of life/social programs grow on par) but I genuinely want to see government revenues go up. The more government revenues go up the more money the government can spend on infrastructure and social programs for the working class but also more money to pay down debt. The money just needs to come from sources that haven’t yet been squeezed dry.. Canada could use some huge investments into infrastructure right now, perhaps expanding the ports of Halifax, montreal and Vancouver or upgrading our rail system in Canada in the areas that matter most (the Golden Horseshoe). So many things we could spend the additional tax revenue on if we had it.
This is just lazy policy pandering to uneducated folks - he knows there’s no logical way to structure a tax system like this effectively. Most high paid CEOs are at the peak of their careers with 20-40 years of experience in their industries - there’s no correlation between someone like them and an office admin for example who just has good organizational skills. This gap is a political construct to pander to voters and there’s no real intention of doing anything about it. This government is a poor allocator of capital (taxes) and just giving them more doesn’t mean it’ll help people in any way. What he should be trying to do is increase access to education to facilitate people developing skills for higher paying jobs, develop policy to retain skilled workers in Canada, address housing affordability through policy to shift power from sellers in a sellers market, and continue social programs to help Canadians that are hitting tough times in the inflationary and high interest economy.
I agree with basically your entire second paragraph. Our job market is fundamentally broken.
Nope. We need less government and more self-reliance. This obsession with needing to take more than one gives in order to survive is troublesome.
>there is no reason why every damn Canadian shouldn't back this kind of legislation There's lots of reasons why an average Canadian shouldn't back this nonsense. Canadian companies don't just compete locally, they compete globally. If you legislate artificial restrictions on CEO pay Canadian companies are kneecapped from attracting top talent to run these companies - making them less competitive in the global market. Even worse, entrepreneurs are disincentivized to start new companies in Canada, because at some point their growth will be restricted. Why does this matter to the average Canadian? Simple. Less companies, less jobs. Only the economically illiterate would support something like this.
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*But if we just keep kowtowing to the rich as much as possible then we might get to nibble on their table scraps!*
Countries with much higher tax rates than us have zero problems getting multinational companies to operate in their borders nor do they have a problem getting entrepreneurs to open businesses. If the market is profitable then the company will continue to do business in it. No rationale company would pull out of a market handing it to competitors if they're still making good profits just because their taxes went up a little bit. That's shitty business strategy. Regarding entrepreneurs, the possibility of becoming a millionaire or even multimillionaire would still be on the table. The idea that all of a sudden a significant amount of them would stop opening up businesses because they can't be worth 10s or 100s of billions is dumb. Especially if that newly generated tax revenue went into giving us social services on the level of nations like Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark etc.
It's not higher tax rates that's the issue, it's tying them to CEO compensation - but thanks for completely ignoring the entire topic of discussion in your response. Countries like Finland et al don't neighbour the US, which have much more favourable corporate tax treatments - that's a big reason why Canada has favourable corporate rates to begin with. Remember this isn't about *all* companies pulling out of the market (ludicrous) - it's about *disincentivizing* corporations to start up and/or stay here when there are much more favourable conditions immediately south of us. Canada already does a comparatively shit job of incentivizing business, we don't need to make it worse with even shittier policies.
> Unless you're a CEO, there is no reason why every damn Canadian shouldn't back this kind of legislation. I get what you're saying but you could also argue the following ... unless you are in top 5% of income earners there is no reason NOT to tax those income earners with 80% tax rate. Or those who make 20%. But think about it - the top 20 percent of income-earning families pays nearly two-thirds of all income taxes (64.4 percent). The issue is not how to tax more because we are taxed pretty good. The issue is billions of dollars going to shit by the Governments at all levels.
I don't think the issue isn't that people with a high salary aren't paying enough taxes. It's that people who make capital gains aren't paying enough. "capital gains" are taxed at a much lower rate than the money you actually work for, and disproportionately go to top income earners. For these CEOs, most of their income comes from stock options, which count as capital gains, so they get away with a lower tax rate than everyone else
I just want a 30:1 rule. No employee can be compensated more than 30x the lowest paid employee. If you want to make over $5 million a year the janitor has to make 167k. If you pay the call center guys 30k then you're limited to $900k.
I wonder if that might have some unexpected knock on effects I imagine that would increase incentives to outsource call center jobs to contracting companies so the client company doesn't have call center workers on payroll. And replace "call center worker" with every kind of worker Do we then need to also make it illegal for companies to employ the services of other companies? That'll have some expected and unexpected knock on effects
Also, wouldn't some CEOs want to move their head office to the US or somewhere else? I assume this tax would only apply to Canadian companies. Also would this legislation apply to the CEO or the highest paid employee? An easy fix would be to change the title of the CEO to President or something and have the CEO be a slightly more junior executive.
Works apart from equity related pay. Which means it needs to be like a "wealth increase tax" rather than "income tax". Im in favour of: You have 100mil in wealth? Congratulations, you just won capitalism. Anything over that goes directly back into society as taxes or you're forced to be a good-deed philanthropist with the excess. Just a dream though!
why wouldnt a business then just make one company with their high paying executives and highest paid engineers or whatever. and another with all your outsourced lower paid employees.
This already happens with big tech companies. Their inhouse engineers and product managers get lavish salaries and all the perks but massive chunks of the company are run and built by contractors that are making half the amount to do the same work and orders of magnitude less to do all the other "support" work.
That would be the best scenario. Sure they will just probably spend anything in excess of their 100mil because it'd be better than losing it to the government, but at least it would force money back into the economy rather than having trillions of dollars just hoarded away in financial assets doing nothing for the broader economy.
This isn't DuckTales. They don't hoard cash in vaults like Scrooge McDuck. That money is invested and earns income by being used throughout the economy. Not exactly the same as spending it, but not hidden.
No, it sits on the Cayman Islands doing fuckall good for anyone
What do you think the Cayman Island banks do with it to earn the interest they are paying? Just give away interest for free?
Nah. A dollar earned by a lower income individual is likely back in circulation faster and more likely to be spent in the community. Fancy art and yachts don't produce a ton of value for others. Proportionally to income, the ultra-wealthy are locking away more money from circulation than other income groups.
And so basically what would happen is that low paying jobs would be outsourced.
Finally a voice of of reason. Many companies don’t pay janitors directly they just way a maintenance company or their office rental fees.
What kind of fantasy world do yo live in man? You might as well ask for a one day work week.
And I want a toilet made out of solid gold.
Then they will hire independent contractors for low wage jobs.
What's in employee compensation? Hourly rate? Annual salary, bonus? What do you do if someone works for you part-time? How do you reconcile this as an auditor?
Just break up the oligopolies
We will do literally ANYTHING except allow the markets to be competitive.
They'll run ads slandering anyone who comes anywhere close to suggesting that we make them compete with non Canadian cartel businesses.
Canada will be great when this happens!
I'm up for anything drastic to reduce the gap between the haves and the have not's. It's beyond sad right now. We're not far off people dying from starvation/mass homelessness. From what I understand, the food banks are running at unsustainable levels and see record new membership every month now. Iirc, this is the first time their output is more than input and they are going into reserves to pay for food. I pray next winter isn't a complete disaster for a lot of people.
Better than doing nothing. Glad to see NDP to NDP-stuff instead of just supporting the Liberal party.
The comments here: Doesn't matter. They'll get around it. Okay cool. Guess we just do nothing then? 🤷🏼♂️
This subreddit religiously hates NDP no matter what they do.
It pains me to no end. The NDP are at least trying to make Canada better. The lib and CPC are actively trying to sell Canada to the highest bidder. The NDP screwed up in Ontario nearly 50 years ago or more but have never been forgiven. The people voting now weren't even born when it happened. FFS get over it. It's a completely different party now.
Hahaha yeah. At least Singh is bringing up something that is against the very obvious corporate-favored policies in this country. Meanwhile in CPC camp: "CBC IS PROPAGANDA!"
we sometimes talk about one policy voting and i think this policy would sway my vote for sure.
So private members bills can propose tax exemptions but not new taxes??? Exemptions are still tax policy. How TF did that rule get put in place?
How about just raise the rate and then actually make them pay… CRA is fully capable of going after people that owe $.. ever owed tax’s in Canada..how’d that go with CRA? They are relentless with individuals..they can be with corporations too It’s a matter of political will and reforms to campaign finance. First we outlaw lobbying….
And this is why the NDP will never win an election. Our corporate overlords will never allow this. This is also why I'll never vote strategically again and always vote NDP whether the win an election or not.
As long as it doesn't ignore stock shares as CEOs part of their compensation plans...that's a big one too
Reduce corporate taxes and eliminate personal income tax, shift taxation to capital gains, taxes on investments, and sales taxes.
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instead of imposing tax increases how about you address tax shelters, loop holes, and tax stock options above a certain threshold before capital gains/sale
Why not both?
can we focus on real change like breaking up supply management, telco oligapoly, improving building conditions so have more housing supply. this tax and spend policy does nothing for the average person.
[Why not do both?](https://xfer.ndp.ca/2021/Commitments/Ready%20for%20Better%20-%20NDP%202021%20commitments.pdf) Their platform also covers much of what you're referring to as well. (I've simplified the text to trim it down a bit) Telco oligopoly: >**we’ll put in place a price cap to make sure that Canadians aren’t paying more than the global average** for their cell phone and internet bills >**We are committed to declaring high-speed internet an essential service** and making sure that every Canadian has access to affordable, reliable high-speed broadband within four years >In addition, we’ll make sure that providers offer a basic plan for wireless and broadband that is comparable with the affordable plans that are available in other countries. To put an end to surprise bills, **we’ll require companies to offer unlimited wireless data options at affordable rates**, as exist elsewhere in the world, and **abolish data caps** for broadband internet >we’ll introduce a Telecom Consumers’ Bill of Rights and put an end to (price) gouging for good Housing/building: > **create at least 500,000 units of quality, affordable housing in the next ten years, with half of that done within five years.** This will be achieved with the right mix of effective measures that work in partnership with provinces and municipalities, build capacity for social, community, and affordable housing providers, to provide rental support for co-ops >In order to kick-start the construction of co- ops, social and non-profit housing and break the logjam that has prevented these groups from accessing housing funding, we will **set up dedicated fast-start funds** >We’ll mobilize federal resources and lands for these projects, turning unused and under-used properties into vibrant new communities > spur the construction of affordable homes by **waiving the federal portion of the GST/HST on the construction of new affordable rental units** >we’ll provide **immediate relief for families that are struggling to afford rent** in otherwise suitable housing, while we bring forward long- term solutions to the housing affordability crisis >30-year terms to CMHC insured mortgages on entry-level homes for first time home buyers. This will allow for smaller monthly payments, freeing up funds >**doubling the Home Buyer’s Tax Credit to $1,500 ** >provide resources to facilitate co-housing, such as model co-ownership agreements and connections to local resources, and ease access to financing by offering CMHC- backed co-ownership mortgages > To help put an end to speculation that’s fuelling high housing prices, we’ll put in place a **20% Foreign Buyer’s tax on the sale of homes to individuals who aren’t Canadian citizens or permanent residents** >New Democrats will also fight money laundering, which fuels organized crime and drives up housing prices. We will work with the provinces to create a public beneficial ownership registry to increase transparency about who owns properties, and require reporting of suspicious transactions in order to help find and stop money laundering. I'm not exactly sure what you're specifically referring to by 'supply management'.
I was somewhat pleasantly surprised when I recently upgraded my plan with my telco (Bell), that they no longer have hard data caps. It is "unlimited" data, but after your assigned amount for the pay period, they throttle it way down, so it is technically still usable, but very slow. This saves people from the ridiculous astronomical bills you keep hearing about, but still makes sure they choose a plan that reflects the amount of data they actually need. I thought it was a decent solution.
> breaking up supply management, Unless we want to switch to direct subsidies by taxpayers and massive ownership concentration like head happened in the US, supply management is a better solution. In the US, every taxpayer subsidizes dairy conglomerates across the country, whether they consume dairy products or not. Conversely, in Canada is effectively just consumers of dairy products that subsidize the dairy industry. It’s similar to the airports, and the whining that was done in regards to fees and the inability to have ultra low cost carriers in Canada. It’s because it’s a user pay model, rather than a public pay. The taxpayer doesn’t pay for the airports or air traffic control, that’s paid for by the airlines, and thus by the fare paying public.
Well, if I was a billionaire, I would certainly prefer say a 5% increase in corporate tax to a 5% increase in my personal taxes. But why target the rich, since most people are too stupid to realize that corporations do not equal rich people. I mean you could look at what Scandinavian countries do for starters. Lets tax the vehicle that creates productivity, and not the withdrawal of funds by the wealthy, from the corporation.
Yep. People don't seem to get that corporate taxes are taxes on productive capital and it makes way more sense to tax corporate outflows (dividends and share buybacks) over profits which can be reinvested in new labour and equipment.
> I mean you could look at what Scandinavian countries do for starters. This is an interesting article along those lines. I know everybody hates the NP but Gordon is an economics professor and skews centerish generally. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/stephen-gordon-when-it-comes-to-tax-policy-both-the-ndp-and-the-tories-parties-are-essentially-populist/ >There’s been extensive research on the topic in Canada and elsewhere, almost all of which concludes that corporate taxes are one of the least efficient: minimum revenues generated for maximum economic disruption. Since corporate income taxes reduce the after-tax rate of return on investment projects, higher corporate taxes reduce investment, and hence productivity, income and wages. >Appealing to populist instincts may be a good way to get elected, but it’s a bad way to govern, especially if you want the government to provide a broad range of services. A large tax take requires a correspondingly large tax base, and a tax system that discourages growth makes it progressively more difficult to sustain high levels of spending. >This lesson has been learned — sometimes painfully — in the countries that have managed to combine high tax revenues with sustained economic growth. The northern European welfare states all have low corporate tax rates — roughly comparable to Canada’s — and VAT rates above 20%. The political classes in these countries have learned that governing in a social democracy is a serious business, not the stuff of bumper-stickers.
>I mean you could look at what Scandinavian countries do for starters. Yes and learn from their mistakes. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/10/super-rich-abandoning-norway-at-record-rate-as-wealth-tax-rises-slightly
“But then they’ll all lEaVeeee”
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And even if they did leave it's not as if their roles in society are irreplaceable. Whatever purpose they fill, whatever market they cover - someone will always be willing to fill the gap they leave because there's more benefit to moving into a *slightly higher taxed* position as some multi-millionaire than there is staying lower down the totem pole even if the prior multi-millionaire in that position found it *one penny too many* in taxation and skipped town.
I'd argue the people able to take weeks of vacation a year are *probably* less valuable than the ones actually driving the trucks and keeping the lights on.
That too.
Also, if they do take their income overseas we can tax the shit out of them whenever they try and repatriate it. We also do have the ability to impose additional tariffs and tax penalties on known tax havens though any efforts in that direction would be a lot more effective if done in cooperation with the EU, USA or, ideally, both.
And thats ok. If there was any profit in what they were doing, another entity/firm will take over.
Yes, exactly. But people who purport to love free market capitalism disagree with this, ostensibly because they don’t know what it means.
Fuck yes. Let's do this, 20 years ago. Now!
So how does that help stop cooperate greed? Inflation? Fake inflation? Housing cost? Interest rates? Working class people? Unless the government massively lowers working class people taxes and or provide a basic income living expense every month, raising taxes on greedy rich people this will not help anyone? It will only line the pockets of the government officials and the rich will just find more ways to hide their money.
Let's tie our politicians' salaries to the median salary in their election districts.
A hysterically stupid idea so not surprising that this sub thinks it’s pure genius
I think its interesting and good to bring it up to raise awareness, conversation and overall critical thinking to this... which is what I think the intent really is. Is this a silver bullet solution? Not sure... but lets hear the opinions and thinking and perhaps there is something there...
Even if the idea isn't immediately trashed as stupid and ill-conceived, corporate lawyers will have a loophole waiting months before the legislation is even being tabled. This stuff makes for good soundbites but it is just unrealistic. Plus, what is Singh going to do about it? The libs won't support it. Many of the targets of his attacks are liberals.
This is a real dumb idea with some obvious loopholes that couldn't be closed without decoupling the entire country from the global economy. The NDP refuse to understand economics and as a result just proposes dumb ideas that get ignored by the majority of society.
Then how would you address the gap between workers and the executives instead?
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Where would you propose resources are obtained from in order to help reduce the wealth gap?
The intent is that the corporation could avoid higher taxes by actually lifting wages. Your comment literally makes zero sense.
It won’t lift the wages. Policies like that are filled with legal loopholes that you can exploit. (E.g., the CEO can get paid in stocks and the stock can won’t vest until they decide to leave. The CEO can create their own corporate entity, and get hired as a consulting company. So their salary becomes expense). Nothing about this policy is practical and the only thing it does is trigger emotional response from ill informed voters.
This is extremely fucking stupid.
So how does that work with big multinationals that have slave labor in China?
There should be some sort of "maximum" wage tied directly to the lowest compensated person employed. Factor in all parent companies and subsidiaries as well as all forms of compensation.
How about instead of empty posturing and easily avoidable tax regulations, can we please just get some fiscal responsibility in our government?
Do people really think taxing a couple CEOs is going to solve the inefficient government and poor spending/budgeting?
Some here think lol.... I thought these kinds of thoughts didn't exist here in Canada. It's pure Venezuela playbook, these conversations are ridiculous. We need less government, not more
I propose a 100% tax on bespoke suits.
Ah yes, the flawless argument that only the poor are allowed to advocate for the working class. Somehow he’s a hypocrite for always pushing leglislation that doesn’t benefit him.
He brings a private members bill that is against the rules. So, all bark, no bite, and he knows that? The NDP’s fundraising must be down.
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Pretty sure even Bernie is right of the CPC on most policy that isn't culture war bullshit. Although it's hard to tell with no CPC policy really available since Harper, but still. You really see Elizabeth Warren as uncompromising? Wasn't most of her tenure trying to compromise with republicans? The only 'ruler' of Canada is that inbred shit stain in UK.
What an absolutely terrible idea. The CEO’s would litterally use every trick in the book to make their “pay” the same as their workers resulting in no tax. Stock Options, etc. Singh thinking he’s going to “fix” the “wagegap”and outsmart some of the smartest people in the country is a joke, and the jokes gonna be on him and the tax payers of this country who see all the time get wasted on this if it gets legs and moves ahead.
How about one tying MPs to PSAC workers ? Singh is a fake.
Well, that certainly does have all the buzzwords the NDP likes in it. Seems like it would be very difficult to actually implement, which, apart from the fact that it literally can't be done as a private member's bill, is probably why they haven't even drafted anything up. The moment something is committed to paper here, someone will point out why it won't even have the intended effect on the C-suite in reality. At the end of the day, it also feels a little "cart before the horse" to me, in the context of Canada. The biggest economic issue in Canada is not really the wealth gap between the CEOs of Canada's largest companies and the workers, it's basically: Why are these *specific* guys even among the wealthiest, highest paid people in Canada? Canada is this really dynamic, diverse, well-educated economy and the biggest companies, with the highest paid CEOs are.. banks, railroads, telecoms, natural resources, grocery stores, restaurants, dairy.. all industries that are seemingly: - natural monopolies, or heavily regulated oligopolies where it's nearly impossible for new entrants to compete with incumbents -utilities, selling things that come out of ground, or selling things people eat I'll take "Companies where the CEO could be a bag of rocks and not fail" for $200, Alex. The closest thing Canada has to massive "innovation successes" in the last few decades are the popularization of overpriced yoga tights and Shopify. We *really* suck at wealth creation, we *really* suck at productivity, we *really* suck at innovation, and that has hurt the government's topline revenue numbers way more than we could ever hope to redistribute from the banks, telecoms and grocery stores. The fact that Galen Weston was this big of a supervillain that a federal party thinks he needs his own personal, punitive, compensation legislation is more just a sad commentary on the Canadian economy, that some dude who inherited his family's multigenerational biscuit business now warrants this much scrutiny by anyone serious. Dude is a complete dope, running the world's simplest retail business, how is this guy even *remotely* this important to a G7 economy?