Greedy Governments Demonize Business To Justify Ever-Increasing Taxes

November 3, 2017

– Mark MacDonald is the Publisher of the Business Examiner News Group, and President of Invest Northwest Publishing.

CANADA – During the last federal election, now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sloughed off several comments suggesting that corporations existed only to assist business owners in avoiding paying tax.

That was dropped in the midst of endless promises of “sunny ways”, accompanied by Trudeau’s other, inflammatory class-warfare adjectives like “income sprinkling”, “tax loopholes” and not-so-subtle suggestions that the “rich”, aka business owners, need to “pay their fair share”.

Such populist, provocative phrases appealed to Liberal supporters. But few believed Trudeau’s corporation statement would become the platform from which an all-out attack on small and medium-sized businesses would be launched. It has, and then some.

The Federal Liberals have apparently scaled back their plans somewhat, if one is to believe the almost daily re-announcements. It remains to be seen how much change will actually take place to the ill-conceived plans, or if this is yet another smokescreen to confuse the masses while the federal government attempts to slip through the most draconian corporate tax increases this country has witnessed in a century.

So, what are corporations all about? Tax dodge vehicles? Hardly. They were set up as retirement funds for small business owners, as an incentive to encourage people to take risks as they provide a better future for themselves and their families. Imagine how government employees would react if their pensions were hacked to pieces. They’d be horrified. This is what the Liberals tax scheme is doing while tackling corporations – attacking the financial future of business people.

Demonizing something before taxing it is an effective political maneuver. People shrug but don’t complain when they have to pay so-called “sin taxes” on cigarettes and tobacco, for example. Want more money out of the oil and gas industry? Demonize it and make it seem evil to voters, who will almost demand punitive taxes be implemented to stop resource-extracting, “earth ending” companies. And there we have it: The justification of a carbon tax.

When the clouds of government begin to hover over one particular industry, they should be afraid, and get prepared for the impending deluge of taxes that is about to drench them.

Governments play a long end game in this regard, piggy-backing off a social narrative rehearsed steadily through educators, Hollywood and traditional media. Movie after movie depicts big business in the worst possible ways, as profit-hungry corporations who don’t care for any employee or environmental concern, as they chase the almighty buck.

But this needs to be said as plainly as possible: It is not business owners who are greedy. Governments are greedy. Governments are the ones who refuse to restrain their insatiable thirst for more tax revenues to pay for a public service that now makes, on average, 20 per cent more in wages and benefits than those in the private sector. And by the private sector, we mean the jobs that pay for those services in the first place.

As Trudeau trumpets his so-called defense of the middle class – which, by the way, never did better than under the previous government – does he not realize that many small business owners are indeed the middle class?

A thoughtful, even-keeled friend tossed this line out a while ago, and it stuck with me: “Socialism is theft.

Stark, but true, isn’t it? Although some of the principles of socialism may be virtuous – i.e. helping those that cannot help themselves – the very essence of socialism is taking from those who ‘have’ – those that work – and distributing it to those who ‘have not’ because they either don’t or won’t work.

As one friend said: If the government keeps taxing the ‘haves’ and giving to the ‘have-nots’, what will they do when the ‘haves’ leave?

And by the way, if socialism is so great, why isn’t every person in a communist country wealthy, instead of only those at the top? Just asking. . .

So when it comes time for millionaires Trudeau and beleaguered Finance Minister Bill Morneau to wrestle businesses to the ground with “well-deserved” punitive taxes, the chorus of Canadians who don’t understand the challenges of business cheer and chime in with “it’s about time”.

Except it’s nothing but a big smoke screen. As the Trudeau government’s never-ending spending spree continues, far, far above projections, unabated, the realization has come that there isn’t enough money coming in to pay for what they’ve ordered. Thus the attack on “bad, bad business”.

The never-in-business-for-himself Trudeau suggests that business owners are “tax cheats” who find “loopholes” to “sprinkling” money around to avoid Revenue Canada. His devious choice of words is deliberate, without question.

While doing so, he refuses to acknowledge that business owners must – and do – abide by the legal rules laid out by all levels of government. The taxation rules by which Canadian businesses have been governed since 1972 took six years to plan and consider before implementation.

Trudeau’s dramatic tax “plans” were concocted behind the scenes by “bureaucrats gone wild”, in mere months. At last report the federal government received 21,000 responses/objections to the plans – and left itself less than a week to “consider” them all. Which of course they have not.

Greedy business? Hardly.

It’s time the federal government looked in the mirror and realized that as they vainly point the accusatory finger of “greed” at business, there’s three fingers pointed directly back at themselves.

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