Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Alberta Budget Choice website sets us up for tax grab

What a joke.  We are being setup for a tax grab.  There's no doubt no whatsoever.

http://www.budgetchoice.ca is the website that lets us Albertans make decisions about the budget.  What a futile attempt.  Do you think they actually use this info?  They're duping us.

Ok, so I picked the oil price as it stands today ($62/barrel) and selected to cut everything they showed, without raising taxes, yet I still have a $1.7 billion deficit.

But wait a minute, there were so many others areas that could be cut that weren't presented.  MLA salaries?  Expenses?   Bureaucracy?

In fact, of the $42 billion that the Alberta gov't spends now, they can only find $3 billion (7%) to present on this website for cuts?  Am I missing something here?  This gov't is drunk on spending.

Reintroducing health care premiums is dumb. It's just a tax that really hurts the lower income the most.  As many companies used to cover this, it would dig into small businesses and employees.  It's not even an insurance program--just money that goes into general revenue and millions are spent on collecting it.

Increasing the corporate tax rate for big companies would drive them out, actually reducing revenues.

Introducing a sales tax?  Only if you eliminate the income tax or reduce it from 10 to 5%.  As well, there's a lot of folks from other provinces who buy big ticket items like vehicles in Alberta just to avoid the PST/HST.  Say goodbye to that injection into the economy.

So what's the answer?

Simple... cut more crap than just the 7%.  Have the guts to cut.  It's obvious Alison Redford won't "do whatever it takes".  They lied to us.  They don't deserve another year in office.

Here are my results.



5 comments:

Lorne Russell said...

Institute a 5% sales tax and VOILA, all the problems are solved. From $2.6 billion deficit to $2.4 billion surplus.

That is what all those pages are about. Justifying a sales tax.

Good luck Albertans.

Anonymous said...

from 2.6 billion deficit to 2.4 billion surplus, not likely. any additional money would be flushed as fast as the current revenue stream.

newcenturion said...

I was surprised (well not really) at some of the crap they spend our money on. Grants for this, grants for that; programs I've never heard of. I just cut it all. When you're in debt just stop spending on the wants and focus on the needs. Let's face it, Redford is not very smart. She'll be in office for a few years yet (God help us all) so now is the time to put the axe to the tree, slash and burn and piss off everyone you lied to to get in office. Do the tough stuff now because in 4 years nobody will remember anyway. Having said all that, we're getting a sales tax. Because being the true liberal Redford is she can't help herself.

Anonymous said...

today on the radio the claim was that Redford clarified her remarks to say no sales tax and no return to healthcare premiums

Mike said...

I did cut the financing to the finance dept, because they did a poor ,poor job on their forecast for the price of oil.

I would have liked to cut the bureaucracy, , but there was no option for that, but I did cut all but three areas, and raised the income tax to 11%. ended up with a small surplus.