Posted on 08/28/2014 3:50:30 PM PDT by Para-Ord.45
Obama is our Pierre Trudeau.
Consider how Canada got that 26.5 percent corporate rate in the first place. In population, Canada is a small country. Many decades ago, the nati–on followed Britain and applied heavy taxes to fund social programs. In the late 1960s, Canada elected a kind of Barack Obama, a politically oriented law professor, Pierre Trudeau, as prime minister. Trudeau advocated a “just society,” which included universal health care and pushed for Canada’s version of multiculturalism: official bilingualism. The economic consequences of this legacy played out not instantly but over the longer run, especially in unemployment. Persistent inflation and heavy debt dogged the nation. My fellow journalist David Frum has compared Trudeau’s despoilment to “a malicious child on the beach stomping on the sand castle somebody else had worked all morning to build.”
Over the course of a long recovery from Trudeau, Canada realized it had to act to strengthen competitiveness. Competitiveness meant competitive tax rates — all kinds of tax rates. In 2006, a new Conservative government, led by Stephen Harper and finance minister Jim Flaherty, made taxes the centerpiece of its program: “Taxes will go down for all Canadians,” Flaherty said. At that point Canada taxed capital gains heavily, though even then its capital-gains rules did not punish short-term trades, as we do in the States. But in this period, revenues did not flow as the government hoped. So the government cut the capital-gains rate down to an effective 14.5 percent, below the U.S. rate of 15 percent.
Canada also handled the financial crisis differently from the U.S. Canadian banks did not need the bailouts many U.S. banks did. When the International Monetary Fund endorsed a proposal for a global tax on profits, the Obama administration supported the idea. But Canada opposed the idea, and the tax did not go into force.
Still, Canada has emerged competitive: A 2014 KPMG study of tax costs for business ranked Canada first among ten major countries, its costs 46.4 percent lower than those in the United States.
Our system of worldwide taxation, taxing companies wherever they work, causes them to shift to nations like Canada, which taxes companies only for their Canadian activity.
When President Obama calls inversions wrong or unfair, he is simply replicating Pierre Trudeau’s historic error: depicting an economic situation in (his own) moral terms. How fitting that it is a Canadian news event that highlights the costs of such sanctimony.
It is absolutely pathetic that companies are moving/headquartering in Soviet Canuckistan for a better business climate than the USA.
Except Pierre Trudeau wasn’t a Muzzie who hated his country. That makes Obozo and his handlers different.
America has innovated the most brilliant tax system ever devised in all of human history. It’s called the “FairTax” and is described here:
It’s not just lowering rates. The US shouldn’t lay claim to worldwide income.
Get real. Canada in many ways is much freer than the U.S.
It is now. That is the point.
It’s not just lowering rates. The US shouldn’t lay claim to worldwide income.
Yup. That’s simply flatly illegitimate.
You’re saying companies should sit their asses in the U.S. and continue to grab their cankles?
Probably the best way to go for many businesses. Before long, there won’t be much sold down here in the States, and Canada is a net energy exporter with enormous land and water resources.
Hang in there, my American friends, help for you is on the way.
It looks like our Prime Minister Harper is going to be replaced with the incredibly stupid, extremely left-leaning, dumb-as-a-bag-of-rocks son of Trudeau, pretty boy Justin. This flake will have businesses running for cover in short order.
How we can be so stupid is beyond me.
Yup,
Lil`` justin will be Canada`s Obama.
They are sweeping Provincial after Provincial elections from NS, to Ont. to soon to be NB.
Everyone forgets his father and 13% unemployment and 18% interest rates.
Trudeaumania. I remember it. Looked a lot like Obamamania.
No
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