Sensible Taxation

If we lived in Dr. Pangloss's "best of all possible worlds," I suspect that I would be a fairly conservative fellow. After all, in such a world those who worked hard would always get ahead; poverty, other than the self-induced kind, would be non-existent, and we would all be well on the road to self-perfection.

Yet, with all due respect to the eternal optimists of this world, life is not like that for countless millions of people, a fact that, thanks to our wealth of news sources, most of us are well-aware of. However, thanks to the unrelenting propaganda of the far right, many of us, I suspect, are largely ignorant of the inequities built into our tax system.

Of course, most of us would like to keep more of our money, but the question ultimately becomes, "At what cost?" Is it a fair trade for us to have more tax breaks thanks to our station in life at the expense, say, of the working poor? Should our individualistic impulses trump the collective good?

A story in today's Star highlights a problem faced by many. Entitled Campaign 2000 urges Ottawa to eliminate child tax credits and use money to fight poverty, it discusses a campaign by a coalition called Campaign 2000:

On the 23rd anniversary of a unanimous House of Commons pledge to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000, the national coalition is once again calling for a federal plan with goals and timelines to get the job done.

With one in seven Canadian children — including one in four in First Nations communities — still living in poverty, this year’s progress report goes after Ottawa’s “inefficient” tax system

Among other things, the group calls for the elimination of certain tax credits and benefits that tend to favour the middle (or at least what's left of it) and upper classes, with the resources saved going toward boosting the National Child Benefit to a maximum of $5,400 a year, up from the current maximum of $3,485:

At $5,400, a single parent with one child who is working full-time at $11 an hour would be able to escape poverty.

More broadly, it would cut Canada’s child poverty rate by 15 per cent and lift 174,000 children out of poverty.

While people are so busy accumulating more 'stuff', it is easy to forget the struggles that define the day-to-day existences of far too many. Campaign 2000 at least has a plan to ease those burdens.