Pierre Antoine Brown

I support the move to a two-thirds inclusion rate on capital gains — or I would, if it were part of a broader move to not only equalize the tax treatment of different sorts of income, but lower the tax on income generally — but this is deeply misleading. There's no mention that the capital gains is earned on income previously saved and invested, which, unless it is sheltered in an RRSP, has already been taxed; - no mention that the capital gains comes out of income that has also been taxed at the corporate level, which is what the partial inclusion of capital gains is supposed to capture; - no mention that capital gains are not indexed to inflation, meaning the values of the assets at time of sale is expressed in dollars that may be worth a fraction of what they were worth in the year of purchase; - no mention, God knows, that the federal government does not need more revenues, the supposed justification for the tax increase; that revenues are already at record high levels (per citizen, after inflation); that, had the government merely kept spending, last fiscal year and this, to the levels projected in Budget 2022 — that is, had it funded more of its new spending plans out of cuts in existing spending — the budget would be in surplus. No, the message is just "YOU pay tax on all of your income (you don't but never mind) and THEY pay tax on half of theirs." Which, if it were not for all of the above, would simply raise the question: why only a 66 per cent inclusion rate? Why not 100 per cent?