If you make more than $500,000 a year in Ontario, you are going to have to pay the NDP tax. It is a surtax of two per cent of money you earn over $500,000. a year. Obviously, if you make that kind of money, you will not have to miss your grand tour of Europe next year. In fact, if Premier McGuinty had not made such a fuss about it, you might not have noticed the tax unless your accountant pointed it out to you.
If you pay this tax, it is a badge of honour. You should fly an orange flag from the battlements of your Ontario mansions. It means you are doing your part to end the deficit caused by the financial woes of 2008. General Motors paid back the money it was given back then. You are now doing your part.
Unfortunately, some of us do not make as much money. We are unable to join you in the role of deficit fighter. Mind you, we also had damn little to do with the bad times that hit us in 2008. Our banks might not have been caught up in the sub-prime mortgage scandal. We might not have been involved in Wall Street ponzi schemes. In fact, most Canadians had no involvement whatsoever in the cause of the financial hard times nor in the ham-fisted remedies utilized by our reluctant governments.
But we can assure you, we have paid and paid. We are paying the higher municipal taxes now because of the accelerated infrastructure programs forced on our municipalities by federal and provincial governments. We are paying other taxes that disappear into the maw of deficit reduction. We are paying the employment insurance and welfare for the people laid off by governments to reduce costs.
As long as you understand, we are all doing our part here. Mind you, it is a bit churlish of Premier McGuinty to call it the NDP tax that you high earners are paying. After all, it is not as though his Whigs have a majority at Queen’s Park.
McGuinty needed some cooperation and he sure was not going to get it from Tiny Tim Hudak and that odd assortment of Ontario Landowners and Harrisites who call themselves Conservatives. Some of his own caucus have been complaining about Tiny Tim leaving the field to the New Democratic Party’s Andrea Horwath when he would not play the negotiation game. Andrea preened for the news media while Tiny Tim when home to sulk.
It was certainly indicative of how much future cooperation Dalton McGuinty is going to get when instead of voting for the revised budget, the NDP sat on their hands and abstained from voting. That let the Liberal budget pass but we might lay a few dollars on an election before the end of next year in Ontario.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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