This Black History Month, it’s important to recognize that economic injustice—both in Canada and around the world—is deeply rooted in racism. The property system in Canada was founded on the forced displacement and exclusion of Indigenous peoples from their land and immigration policies that prevented non-white immigration, effectively barring many thousands of people from accessing property in Canada. These racialized colonial systems laid the foundation for the current racial wealth gap, where racialized Canadians have about half as much wealth as their non-racialized counterparts.
Unlike the United States, where constitutional barriers have historically shielded the ultra-rich from direct taxation, Canada faces no such constitutional legal obstacles—only political ones. And those political excuses are running out.
A wealth tax enjoys overwhelming public support. Nearly 90 percent of Canadians back it, yet successive Liberal and Conservative governments have refused to act. Their refusal isn’t due to legal constraints but to the immense influence of corporate lobbyists and billionaire donors who oppose any effort to make them pay their fair share.
Just last year, powerful corporate interests mobilized to kill a progressive tax measure that would have primarily targeted Canada’s wealthiest citizens and corporations: the partial closure of the capital gains loophole.
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 !fairvote@lemmy.ca
Edit: bigger list here.
Thank you for the great links! I will be bookmarking those!
Having only subscribed to 2 of the above, I appreciate this list.
“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.
Totally fair. One thing that’s super clear in this country is that the tax laws favour the rich. IMHO even RRSPs are of greater benefit to people who don’t pay rent or have paid off their mortgages.
I think it’s important to reward people who save for retirement. I agree that you’ve got to have something before you can save. IMO taxing high wealth i.e. top 5% of the population higher rates so that you can fund the bottom 10% would go a long way to making sure things are a bit more balanced, while still rewarding your “hardest” (which are probably actually your luckiest) workers.
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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.
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I’ve exercised options from a company in canada, they were taxed distinctly (and more favourably) from income.
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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)
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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.
And stop allowing corporate monopolies, bigger companies buying smaller ones has never made it cheaper for Canadians.
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.
previous NDP proposal and expected revenues https://www.investmentexecutive.com/news/industry-news/ndps-proposed-wealth-tax-would-generate-60-billion-over-five-years-pbo/
Gary Stevenson explained it, so long as inequality grows, the rest of us will be struggling more and more.
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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.
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We literally can’t share the economy under capitalism. Capitalism is a tool, but it’s a tool limited by its purpose.
Just like you can’t use a hammer to solder a circuit board, you can’t use capitalism to create a sharing economy.
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.
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Exploitation is the key term here. Things like Co-ops and Crown corporations work to put capital back in the hands of the workers/customers/tax payers, but they can have a hard time competing with private industry. People like the idea of supporting local/sustainable/family owned/etc. but budgets are tight and Walmart or Loblaws fill your grocery cart for 10% less than the local Co-op. This all snowballs, the chains can pay less because they’ve got more positions to fill, they keep things cheap through economy of scale or negotiating power and keep that scale because they’re a bit cheaper then the socially responsible options. People work for the chains because there’s not enough jobs available at the local stores and they can only afford to shop at the chain because they’re being paid chain wages. If we could get enough people together we could enact a change, but that’s hard to do when so much of the population is one missed paycheque away from not being able to pay rent or groceries.
That kind of leaves regulatory or Crown-corps as the better solutions.
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I don’t think a wealth tax is smart. I think the current slate of billionaires that are aligned with fascism should be rounded up and executed. But I am pretty sure every economist agrees that a wealth tax doesn’t make any sense mathematically. People have a bunch of stock either because of founding companies or investing early, and then the public gets to buy the stock, if the public thinks a company is valuable the stock rises and people become wealthy. It doesn’t mean that they actually have that much money that they can deploy. I think it makes more sense to have rules that prevent people using their stock as collateral for loans.
But I am pretty sure every economist agrees that a wealth tax doesn’t make any sense mathematically
I find it difficult to believe you could come to this conclusion in good faith, given how many serious economists advocate for wealth tax.
This economist wrote an award winning book on the topic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century, where he advocates for a wealth tax.
If you think it’s “bad faith” to be against a wealth tax, then I know for a fact you have not looked into any debate about the topic, because there absolutely no consensus. Maybe you have a book that argues in favor of a wealth tax and that’s fine, I am open to arguments in favor of it. But saying I’m bad faith, when I suggested an alternative, is fucking removed.
Your supposition that “every economist agrees that a wealth tax doesn’t make any sense mathematically”, I find in bad faith, not that you are against it. It’s obvious that you are against it.
Maybe you have a book that argues in favor of a wealth tax
I don’t see how you could talk about economics and not know about that book.
ok good 1 chief
lol you’ve clearly been bested here. take the L and rephrase your claims to be less provably false next time.
Yes totally I have been bested I admit it. There is no contention around a wealth tax. Economists generally agree its a good idea and will be a successful policy.
Your parents witnessed the fall of communism. We are here to witness the fall of capitalism. Your stocks will be worthless. Don’t worry about taxes.
??? wont the taxes also be worthless then? Do you think I am against taxes or something?
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Okay so how would it work? Would you tax once a year based on the value of their portfolio?
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.
I agree but I think that that actually enforcing it will be even harder than enforcing the existing income and capital gains taxes. We should still try, but we should spread our net wider.
It doesn’t seem like the article ever explains what a wealth tax is?
A tax on wealth only with zero loopholes to avoid it.
It needs to cover capital gains because of how many measure their wealth by unrealized stock gains.
Also estate tax loopholes need closing so generational inequality doesn’t worsen
Ok. But poor people never have capital gains or pay estate taxes.
I simplified my explanation by putting it in easy-to-understand terms.
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We can point people to Gary Stevenson for down-to-earth explanations on how this should work. He’s been campaigning for wealth taxes in the UK, but also acknowledges the issue is global. He has a playlist you can point people to that want to understand the issues better. Long story short though, he emphasizes taxing difficult-to-move physical assets like commercial properties.
Recently, clips have circulated where he debated Piers Morgan and Dave Rubin at the same time on why excess wealth must be taxed. That said, I think he explains things just as well and in better detail on his own channel.
You can’t make yourself taller by cutting off other people’s legs.
I know you think this sounds smart but…
he pontificated to the peasantry living in the damp muck of the quarry, his tongue black of polish, defending his masters atop the stone tower whose top could not be seen. He himself did not live in the tower, but had a horse upon which he sat, which granted his wisdom authority over the common rabble.
Hey take a load of this guy who doesn’t understand what money is.
