Sales tax

Time for a major tax rethink?

August 14, 2011 Politics

No one enjoys paying taxes. Most of us work hard for our money; the last thing we want to do is hand over a substantial percentage of our sweat and blood to some anonymous government agency that often ends up wasting it all. But in a world without taxes, there would be no government services. [...]

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Alberta needs a more stable revenue base

February 26, 2011 Business

It’s official: Alberta’s government has brought down its latest budget with a deficit of $3.4 billion. Total spending is close to $40 billion. The government expects deficits to continue for a couple of more years before returning into the black. Of course, this deficit number doesn’t include the enormous deficit of Alberta Health Services, so [...]

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Sometimes taxes are a necessary evil

August 27, 2010 Business

Raising or introducing new taxes is almost always political suicide, as the recent examples in British Columbia and Ontario demonstrate following the introduction of the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST). But there are also plenty of examples that teach valuable lessons about what can happen when voters and their elected representatives decide to forgo necessary taxation: [...]

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