And stop allowing corporate monopolies, bigger companies buying smaller ones has never made it cheaper for Canadians.
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2025
401 points (98.5% liked)
Canada
8132 readers
1948 users here now
What's going on Canada?
Related Communities
🍁 Meta
🗺️ Provinces / Territories
- Alberta
- British Columbia
- Manitoba
- New Brunswick
- Newfoundland and Labrador
- Northwest Territories
- Nova Scotia
- Nunavut
- Ontario
- Prince Edward Island
- Quebec
- Saskatchewan
- Yukon
🏙️ Cities / Local Communities
- Calgary (AB)
- Edmonton (AB)
- Greater Sudbury (ON)
- Guelph (ON)
- Halifax (NS)
- Hamilton (ON)
- Kootenays (BC)
- London (ON)
- Mississauga (ON)
- Montreal (QC)
- Nanaimo (BC)
- Oceanside (BC)
- Ottawa (ON)
- Port Alberni (BC)
- Regina (SK)
- Saskatoon (SK)
- Thunder Bay (ON)
- Toronto (ON)
- Vancouver (BC)
- Vancouver Island (BC)
- Victoria (BC)
- Waterloo (ON)
- Windsor (ON)
- Winnipeg (MB)
Sorted alphabetically by city name.
🏒 Sports
Hockey
- Main: c/Hockey
- Calgary Flames
- Edmonton Oilers
- Montréal Canadiens
- Ottawa Senators
- Toronto Maple Leafs
- Vancouver Canucks
- Winnipeg Jets
Football (NFL): incomplete
Football (CFL): incomplete
Baseball
Basketball
Soccer
- Main: /c/CanadaSoccer
- Toronto FC
💻 Schools / Universities
- BC | UBC (U of British Columbia)
- BC | SFU (Simon Fraser U)
- BC | VIU (Vancouver Island U)
- BC | TWU (Trinity Western U)
- ON | UofT (U of Toronto)
- ON | UWO (U of Western Ontario)
- ON | UWaterloo (U of Waterloo)
- ON | UofG (U of Guelph)
- ON | OTU (Ontario Tech U)
- QC | McGill (McGill U)
Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.
💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales
- Personal Finance Canada
- BAPCSalesCanada
- Canadian Investor
- Buy Canadian
- Quebec Finance
- Churning Canada
🗣️ Politics
- General:
- Federal Parties (alphabetical):
- By Province (alphabetical):
🍁 Social / Culture
Rules
- Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
What sort of numbers are people expecting for this? I read somewhere that the NDP proposed a tax of 1-2% on assets above $10M, does that sound right?
I was curious about specifics but couldn’t find any in the article.
Both leading Canadian parties are not going to allow it, they are still both economically conservative. The last 14 years of Liberal Party rule allowed for housing crisis to spiral out of control because both wealthy liberals and conservatives benefit from it. So, why would they even allow to tax the wealthy more? Canadians have the same duopoly problem as the US, as well as having the same oligarchy problem.
"If you tax me, I'll have less to bribe you with."
Politicians don't bite the hand that feeds them. We need more tax brackets at the upper levels; our highest one is $246,752 and over, which only faces a 33% progressive tax rate.
There are so many people in Canada that make way more than this who just aren't paying their fair share. We should also be doing more to tax assets other than income.
There are so many people in Canada that make way more than this who just aren't paying their fair share. We should also be doing more to tax assets other than income.
People who take a salary -- even a high salary, are most paying their fair share. I think they could make a reasonable argument that they pay way more than most (above 246752, 33% which is more than most people in the country).
Compare that with the wealthy:
From here
CEO Tobias Lütke (who was paid a $1 salary but received more than $26 million in option-based awards).
1$, meaning he pays ZERO income tax (he likely pays some taxes on his options).
This is somewhat common for wealthy people, adding more brackets on income isn't going get them paying their fair share.
What I believe we non wealthy people want to see is a wealth tax.
You're mad about the wrong thing. He's going to pay an effective tax rate of about 25% when he exercises those options. (Capital gains)
Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
Assuming he pays 25% tax, which i'd be very suspicious about, he's about 2 million short of his current "fair share".
26 000 000 * 0.25 = 6 500 000
26 000 000 * 0.33 = 8 580 000
If he's deferring till retirement, then likely his tax rate is less, and the bank is lending him money which he can spend freely and call a capital loss lowering his effective tax rate when he does incur those taxes.
The thing about being this wealthy is you can afford to pay people to find ways to lower this rate.
I don't think i'm "mad" about this, but concerned. This kind of inequality leads to violent upheaval, and is currently the cause of a whole pile of unnecessary suffering. If we didn't have people that were this wealthy and some of that money was distributed to say education, healthcare, UBI, we could all have a much healthier pleasant life.
load more comments
(1 replies)
your first position is correct; however,
1$, meaning he pays ZERO income tax (he likely pays some taxes on his options).
This is factually incorrect unless Canada has a special regime to make it work which would not make sense.
He earns 1$ income, the rest is options, his income is below the minimum taxable. The taxes he pays on options aren't income tax.
Why do you assume that equity would not be treated as income once vested?
-
I've exercised options from a company in canada, they were taxed distinctly (and more favourably) from income.
-
He'd have no reason to take his payment this way otherwise. (FWIW Every CEO (both canadian and american) of a wealthy company i've seen has taken their pay in a manner similar to this: most of the comp is in stocks)
Stock grants among any other in kind payment are treated as ordinary income as general rule.
I've exercised options from a company in canada, they were taxed distinctly
Can somebody confirm this?
The wording is a bit vague.
The only way I can see this working if tax was paid when option was granted hence once it was exercised it would be subject to a more favourable capital gains treatment for the proceeds from exercising.
You don't pay taxes on the option, because you haven't bought the option till you exercise it.
Anyway the amount was kinda fixed (it's been awhile) like 25%, it was also years ago, so things may have changed. They are also distinct from RSU's which i believe aren't taxed as low, but still better than top marginal tax rate for income.
Anyway it doesn't seem like those are really the whole story (https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/36l575/eli5_how_can_it_be_that_ceos_often_pay_an/) -- it looks like the tax escape mechanism is to get deferred stocks - which admittedly for the Tobias case we'd have to see how those stocks were awarded. I still think my point 2 applys - why would he take compensation in this mostly stocks manner (and like every other CEO i've seen) unless there was some benefit.
Some what true but 250k is essentially the upper class likely top 10%?
The real money is with the owner class, not wage earners.
People are focused so much on income, no realizing the core issue is that tax code discriminates against labour to favour capital.
Yeah, I think a tax bracket from 250k-500k and then 500k and above would be helpful to get at the people who are in the top 1% of earners. The ownership class, as you say. A big challenge comes from the fact that a lot of these people do not have liquid assets, it's often stocks or some other kind of investment product.
It's not a solution at all but it's a start. I agree that labour is inherently undervalued in Canada, this manifests itself in various ways across our laws, policies, cultural attitudes, labour relations, etc. It seems like untangling that would be a lot more difficult than changing the tax code, since a lot of MPs and MPPs have a vested interest in labour organizations and workers being powerless.
It seems like untangling that would be a lot more difficult than changing the tax code
I think you got this a bit backwards tbh I would posit that we can't untangle unless we change the tax code.
Tax code arguably is the most effective policy tool a government has outside of guns which are dicey. If you notice, a lot of hand out to rich and corpos happen via the tax code. Straight state aid in sheep's wool.
Capital has to be decentralized so people can regain some autonomy and economic security. But we are in catch 22 or whatever scenario where labor has no capital to affect tax code reform. Labour will not get capital unless tax code is reworked.
Some people would argue that higher wages would help which I won't argue against but again... the rich will generate capital that is inherently taxed at lower rate over labour. So over long enough period of time, they will always get ahead.
Capital should be taxed at a higher rate than wages at least to obtain a distribution that provide social cohesion. So this will need to be in place to sustain a balanced system. And it woudl take too long to fix current inequality.
So the solution we need right now is tax on property owned by the rich. Tax stock as the way people pay taxes on houses and cars. Pedons already do it why did the rich get this nice little exemption?
Now all of this is easy to say and consensus is being built around the issue. But mark my word, if this gets a critical mass to try to force a policy change, we will get a civil war.
The most promising counters to big money:
- Canadians for Tax Fairness
- Council of Canadians
- Democracy Watch
- PressProgress
- Protecting Canada
- Fair Vote Canada
- Bluesky Starter Pack: Ontario journalists that cover work & wage issues.
And come join us over at [email protected]
Edit: bigger list here.
Having only subscribed to 2 of the above, I appreciate this list.
Thank you for the great links! I will be bookmarking those!
A wealth tax would be great. I was surprised at how effectively rich assholes shut down the tiny fixes to the capital gains loophole. Expect a flight.
If rich people can avoid paying taxes through the use of loopholes (see the Canadian list in the Panama Papers) I don't understand why gov'ts would worry about them leaving. I mean they're not paying their fair share anyway, so fuck 'em.
They aren't paying their fair share of taxes. The wealthy pay politicians both monetary and non-monetary bribes a significantly smaller sum than the taxes they avoid. If the bribes were more than the taxes they would just pay the taxes.
The tax code architecture is inherently flawed... labour income is taxed higher than capital income. Capital income surplus is than accumulated in stocks. Most of labour does not get much if any surplus income to invest.
But you are not wrong, you are just looking at the shit the rich try to steal on top of this inherent privileged treatment. But even if close ALL of the loops holes, the system is flawed esp at the wealth concentration we currently have across developed economies but esp US.
Call it a property tax so pedons can understand it
For some weird reason they are allergic to taxing rich people's stock but pay property taxes on their houses and cars with out any complaints lol
That’ll yield the opposite outcome when one of the top complaints from homeowners is their property taxes and how they should remain frozen or cut for the rest of time
Well currently property taxes scale very nicely with housing inflation...
Property taxes are never getting cut, they won't even adjust people's bills even property start to devalue, see Detroit post 2008. They were forcing people paying in 2012 based on 2008 valuation. Then proceed to forcefully remove people once they taxes went delinquent. Lien, kicked out, can't sell the house... then municipality has to pay to clear the slots due to blight.
They can have fund demanding that all day to play as a dilatory clown OR they could demand that owners of stocks and other assets pay their taxes to increase the tax revenue in era of massive government debt that twas largely used to acquire these stocks and other assets.
Detroit isn't a good example for Canadian property tax. Ontario reasseses property taxes every 4 years, and as far as I can tell, it's 100% possible for them to go down as they are tied to the specific property and municipality, not national inflation.
You can get ta reassessment in US too...
not national inflation.
I did not say national inflation, i said housing inflation which is reflected in local comparables in year over year basis whichpart of government uses to asses property values for tax.
So in US it is theoretically possible to challenge the assessment and have it reduced but look doing that without a proper counsel and an actual good case.
What happened in Detroit was malfeasance tough because they kept relying on old valuation despite property values tanking because municipal budget was border line in default on their bonds and i think they eventually BK'ed anyway. But not before gutting entire neighborhoods and ruining peoples lives. Because fuck the poor. That's why.
I'm wasn't really talking about reassessments, which is up to the property owner to request. The property value is updated every 4 years automatically, and the change in taxes are spread out gradually over those 4 years. If there was a massive drop in value 3.5 years ago, then sure, that sucks a little, but the next 4 years will compensate. Ontario has a lot of steps to go through before your unpaid tax debt turns into asset forfeiture, I can only assume tenants have more protections in Canada. Evicting someone from their primary residence has its own huge list of rules.
Gary Stevenson explained it, so long as inequality grows, the rest of us will be struggling more and more.
Capitalism does not inherently specify that 5 fat old cucks should own everything.
The system created by the rich does that. If capital was decentralized, i bet we would have a lot less social issues.
Capitalism doesn't "specify" anything, it's a mode of production characterized by the private ownership of the means of production and the exploitation of labour.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Capital abhors decentralization and always works towards centralization and monopolization.
That means 5 people owning everything on a long enough time scale. Then 4, then 3, etc.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Why start a pitch for wealth equality by talking about racism? Pragmatically, it seems like a good way to double the number of reasons for people to disagree with you. Which issue are you trying to combat?
And while I do not debate the historical backdrop of your thesis, is racism really an explanation for wealth concentration at the top of our society today?
For starters, the richest person in Canada by far is Asian, as are many other Canadian billionaires. Racism does not explain who is or is not on the list of tech or pharma titans. Not everybody is named Thomson.
Is the problem you are trying to solve that most indigenous Canadians are less well off than a typical Canadian of European descent? Or that both groups find themselves close together at the bottom of the graph—far below the one percent?
Anyway, I am not trying to dissuade you from fighting racism. Please do. My question is simply if you feel that combining the two issues is the best way to make progress on either one of them.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›