Dear Minister Bill Morneau,
I am contacting you regarding your proposed tax changes. You're a busy man so I'll get to the point quickly: your tax changes are bad and you should feel bad. Let me explain why.
Begin by letting go of everything you were ever taught in business or supposedly ever learned in finance and understand that after the gold standard and easy access to cheap credit, all business nowadays is the swapping of debts between people; the vast majority of people don't have real wealth and even those who do still have to trust that it really is worth the little pieces of paper we call money - a greater act of faith than believing in the Christian mystery.
The second step to grasping our economy is that while you and your gang of cabineteers are right about Canadian controlled private corporations - that they are indeed a way of hiding money and finding write offs, perhaps more so than even making true profit - you have come to the right conclusions but for the wrong reasons.
You think you've found where the fat cats are hiding the fancy feast but what you've actually found is how money goes back into the economy.
Individuals that are actually successful in this country are subjected to an egregious amount of taxes - more than half of their income in the majority of provinces.
One of the ways to pay a lower rate of taxes is to effectively say "fine, I will share my wealth," by incorporating, which will result in a business being founded, recycling the money.
A truck is bought, a logo is designed, a bookkeeper is employed, a kid gets his first job, and thus the economy continues.
I'm going to reiterate this point because this is crucial: you people in government, in Ottawa and elsewhere, have made the burden of taxation so heavy that going into business is actually the only way to save on it; that is to say, the real reason there are so many of these numbered companies, many of which make no substantial profit, is that you have made wealth such a curse, it is better to share it through the lower bracket and write offs.
In the spirit of Canadian taxation, I will now share my vitriol for you with the pathetic people, especially those my age, who have no problem with this idiotic "business as usual." We ought to be ashamed of such an asinine way of running an economy, a world where people often talk about going into business with some great idea or product, but in reality are secretly coveting the writeoffs of getting Inc. or Ltd. behind whatever unoriginal name they've brainstormed.
There really is no other way of saying it, so I'll say it again: this is shameful. Trade and commerce, while it has always been a messy business, is still ostensibly based on the idea that goods or services of a fair quality are exchanged by people who have done real work for the medium they are using for exchange.
In short, business is supposed to be the exact opposite of a shell game, precisely because it is made up of material, rational rules of engagement.
Ultimately, the fault most greatly lies with you, Minister, and your long line of successors behind, going back a century to when income tax was first created to pay off the Great War.
If you truly care about fair taxation, you must start with the real problem: government chicanery is the reason there are private corporations and target tax credits; rationalize taxation, and the entire raison d'etre for incorporating will change from miserish coveting to bold market competition.
Despite your own childish leader, despite the policy wonks, despite your own bourgeois socialist misgivings, it is actually within your power to put this country back on the right track, with rules that give us an economy worth having.
Your party has branded itself as progressive, forward looking Grits; why modernize our tax code?
Because it's 2017 and time to grow up.
