The New Brunswick Business Council has asked the province to restore the corporate tax rate to the 2008 level which would see it rise from 10% to 13%.
They have also come out against the current governments plan to slash the business property tax rate.
In a statement that demonstrates the coziness between business and government, Council CEO Susan Holt said: the business council was never supportive of the tax cuts, but they did not speak up at the time
"We didn’t go out publicly because we didn’t want to hang (former premier) Shawn (Graham) out to
dry but we didn’t think that was a move the economy needed at the time,"
Here's the part I like:
"I think we were proven out that those reductions didn’t stimulate the
economy* the way that they anticipated. So business council members
believe that similarly returning the corporate tax to where it had been
will not cripple the economy given that we didn’t see the gains from the
reduction."
While to many of us that statement seems obvious it is still nice to hear a business group say it. Can the tide finally be turning?
*emphasis added
Interesting that corporate tax rates are never mentioned in any discussions around government revenues and expenses. In Canada (esp. Ontario) we have among the lowest corp. tax rates in the developed world - certainly much lower than in the US. It is not creating jobs. And, it is killing social programs and further reducing gov. revenues.
ReplyDeleteAll part of the neoliberal agenda to starve government of revenue and coupled with FTAs cripple it's ability to function
DeleteSusan Holt can be more honest than her corporate members might like at times, and she's correct with these statements. God bless her. Now if she could only get the facts straight about fracking, we'd get somewhere with the pro-fracking business crowd.
ReplyDelete