OH MY MY Seems that the fancy CBC dude Neil Macdonald is having too much fun at out expense today EH?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/tax-avoidance-1.4432594

Want to save a ton of money? Try Pigovian tax avoidance: Neil Macdonald

Just stop drinking, smoking and parking in prohibited areas

By Neil Macdonald, CBC News Posted: Dec 05, 2017 5:00 AM ET

  
789 Comments 


  
Mike Trout

Hah ha............................just wait till pot is sold by the government and the taxes slapped on that folks.

ABL 2019

 @Fenian Conn comment went "POOF" but not before I replied to it

David Raymond Amos

@Fenian Conn Who cares about either silly game with letters and numbers? Some people run for public office as Independents don't ya know?

 

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David Raymond Amos

@Mike Trout Oh my where did the @Fenian Conn comment go?

Fenian Conn

@Mike Trout
ABC is better, and original, too.

David Raymond Amos

@Fenian Conn I see that you comment is back eh?

  
John L. Kennedy

How can you NOT drink living in a country with a PM like Wood Pile Trudeau?

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David Raymond Amos

@John L. Kennedy "How can you NOT drink living in a country with a PM like Wood Pile Trudeau?"

Methinks that byway of your reasoning that if you had Trump as your leader then you would well on your way to being a full blown alcoholic by now N'esy Pas?

 

David Raymond Amos

@John L. Kennedy Oh My somebody did not like my reply to you so I Tweeted it then blogged about it

  
Earl Sargent

Yes. Follow Justin and Billy. Off shore accounts to avoid your fair share of taxation ,Neil. Follow their lead.

 

John L. Kennedy

@Fenian Conn
I am guessing Mr Conn,that you pay a LOT of alcohol taxes

David Raymond Amos

@John L. Kennedy Methinks he also sings the old Beatles tune "Taxman" a lot in the shower as Bronfman a very good fund raising buddy of Trudeau "The Younger" laughs all the way to some overseas bank N'esy Pas?


 
Axel Flanders (The poster formerly known as Jive Turkey)

What about playing the lottery, that in some circles is called 'the idiot tax" ?

Jon Holmes

@Axel Flanders (The poster formerly known as Jive Turkey) Used to be referred to as the "Numbers Racket" once upon a time...

David Raymond Amos

@Jon Holmes "Used to be referred to as the "Numbers Racket" once upon a time..."

Its weirdly wonderful when the truth hurts so much it makes me laugh.

 
mo bennett

too funny! meanwhile, back at the ranch, our beloved politicians do essence of squat to go pigovian on the offshore boys and girls.

David Raymond Amos

@mo bennett That goes without saying but since you did I agree

David Raymond Amos

@mo bennett Yo Mo what you say to wind up Davie so?

  
Roger Reed

With this current Government in Ottawa this is not a good time to give up drinking,in fact with what this crowd is doing to this Country it would make a person start drinking

David Raymond Amos

@Roger Reed "it would make a person start drinking"

Methinks they write Country and Western tunes about such things all day long N'esy Pas?


 

Robert Loblaw

And Ontario's so-called "Sunshine List" of public servants who made more than $100,000 last year contained the names of 13 "parking enforcement officers," the modern equivalent of meter maids.

Absolutely outrageous.

Boggles the mind.

Tell me would someone please, even with overtime, explain to me how a parking by-law enforcement employee earns that much.

Anyone?

David Raymond Amos

@Robert Loblaw "Boggles the mind" ??? Nope much more than that.

I still have not recovered from laughing but at least I am up of the floor and typing again.


 
Paul Scanlan
This is brilliant. I don’t smoke, drink, and could count on one hand how many tickets Inhave ever got for parking violations. I hate paying tax of any kind. I will pay a reasonable amount but nothing more. The government continues to show an inability to manage money and Inin turn would rather not give it to them. Cheers

David Raymond Amos

@Lily O'Loughlin "It is also possible to pay no taxes (except sales taxes and things like that) if you keep your income below the taxable level and live an extremely modest lifestyle."

I have been doing just exactly that since 1987

  
Mordax Cynici

Does anyone out there want to hypothesize that the legalization of weed had something to do with generating a staggering amount of tax revenue for the sunny ways team ?

David Raymond Amos 

@Mordax Cynici "Does anyone out there want to hypothesize that the legalization of weed"

Methinks that it had to do more with an election promise to secure a mandate and the possibility of Tax Revenue was merely a secondary issue down the road if elected

  

 

Steve Timmins

After the paradise paper, everyone needs to realize that only fools pay taxes. Our leaders PM and Finance Minister have demonstrated that it's ok to avoid taxes and rules if they don't benefit you.

David Raymond Amos

@Steve Timmins "everyone needs to realize that only fools pay taxes"

Why else do you think the wealthy political Brits created the mandates of many of their offshore islands eons ago?

Charlie Wood

@Steve Timmins

What Finance Minister, I only see the Minister of Insider Trading.

David Raymond Amos

@Charlie Wood Never forget Billy has the inside scoop on the wicked french fry game and that is worth some seriously big bucks

 

Brenda Estile

Why is there no Pigovian tax for mismanagement of taxes by our leaders?

David Raymond Amos

@Brenda Estile Ahh but there is a plan for that.

However it is just another secret hidden tucked in a closet of a backroom within the Privy Council Office. Methinks they are no doubt saving it for a rainy day to apply against fine and fancy dudes such and Trudeau "The Younger" and Billy Morneau it they get feeling their oats, step out of line and screw the other plans that "The Powers That Be" have in store for the poor taxpayers they purportedly serve. N'esy Pas?

  

Jeff hunt

Well the government must hate me. I don't drink, don't smoke and have had no parking tickets in 55+ years. I almost feel guilty not paying enough taxes......NOT.

David Raymond Amos

@Jeff hunt As you I have two issues covered but I must confess that I smoke enough for both of us.

However if I continue to do so I will pay less taxes in the end by not living as long as most men do.

David Raymond Amos

@Jeff hunt Methinks Mr David needs to park his car and have a drink and a smoke in order to calm down N'esy Pas?

  
Stanley Brooks

Every generation has had its fare share of gripes with government, taxes, waste, more taxes, less in our pockets, etc. and as life has gotten easier over time it has also gotten harder. How much does the gov't require to sustain a country, a province, a municipality. When do we start to live for ourselves, save for ourselves and children, without someone else digging into our pockets. What you name Neil are luxuries and yes, we the citizen have the power to stop consuming or parking in places we shouldn't, but what about those things we have no power to stop getting whacked with. Higher property taxes for less service, or to pay for pie-in-sky pipe dreams of crazy mayor, mismanagement of what were public utilities sold from under the public without consultation, the scandal, garbage that those we elect makes a farce out of democracy and just make us all turn to the luxuries a little more, which feeds to the "machine" the money they so crave in the hopes they leave us the hell alone, at least for a while.

Ron Vollans

@John L. Kennedy
The conservatives would arrest the speaker.

David Raymond Amos

@Ron Vollans "The conservatives would arrest the speaker."

Yea Right If the neo cons were even remotely ethical they would have done that in 2006 instead of electing him again.

 

David Raymond Amos

@James Smith "I have read about the Liberals gagging some public servants that handled confidential/classified information."

The Liebranos and the RCMP et al have been involved in trying to muzzle me since 1982

Michael G. L. Geraldson

I'd be willing to bet somebody in Ottawa is already salivating about the thought of all those Pigovian taxes they'll collect on legal cannabis, even though they say it's not about revenues.

David Raymond Amos

@Michael G. L. Geraldson "even though they say it's not about revenues."

Yea they are Haven't ya noticed how the Feds and their provincial minions are arguing about how to divide up the take and who pays what to enforce their upcoming laws?

 

mo bennett

you mean like billie did with his share sell off?

David Kane

@Fenian Conn - LOL , you should write for This Hour Hs 22 Minutes , they love BS

David Raymond Amos

@David Kane Methinks Neil Macdonald should Moonlight over there as well N'esy Pas?

 
Cyril Hurd

Don't smoke, hardly drink, don't get parking tickets, pay my credit card on time. Why aren't I super rich?

David Raymond Amos

@Cyril Hurd "Why aren't I super rich?"

Methinks I may because you believe what CBC claims is true.

Cyril Hurd

@David Raymond Amos Methinks you don't recognize sarcasm.

David Raymond Amos

@Cyril Hurd Nope I know sarcasm when I read it but apparently you don't. However the joke is truly on both of us. Check this out closely.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/fundy-royal-riding-profile-1.3274276

 

John Napier

I do not mind to pay taxes if it is for a good cause. but the problem is that waste and misuse our tax mony anyway they can. The more you pay them the bigger deficit and debt we have.

.

David Raymond Amos

@John Napier Imagine an election in which nobody voted in protest of all the nonsense put upon us?

Harold Fitzgerald

If you want to save on taxes!!!!!!

Stop voting Liberal!!!!

Vote for a party that will bring you radically smaller government, less social spending.

Demand less government.

David Raymond Amos

@Harold Fitzgerald "Demand less government"

I always run as an Independent Imagine if Independents won the majority of seats then formed a coalition government with no whipped votes?

Folks should Google this sometime

Fundy Royal Debate

Want to save a ton of money? Try Pigovian tax avoidance: Neil Macdonald

Just stop drinking, smoking and parking in prohibited areas

By Neil Macdonald, CBC News Posted: Dec 05, 2017 5:00 AM ET

If we all stopped drinking and strived to obey every single silly little parking and traffic regulation, what would happen? It would create chaos — just as it would disrupt credit card companies if everyone paid in full each month. (Ashley Burke/CBC News) 

Yet another friend quit drinking a few months back.

He turned up at a dinner party the other night looking clearer-eyed and less paunchy and, he says, feeling better and sleeping at night.

We all congratulated him, over a bottle of good wine. And of course, behind his back, there have been various discussions of whether he's now less fun than he was when he'd tell guests to descend his cellar stairs and take their pick from his superbly stocked electronic wine cellar (he's a generous fellow).

Well, his fun quotient seems pretty much the same to me. But what I really admire is the fact that he's found a way to pay considerably less tax.

Liquor taxes

The liquor-and-wine price-fixing monopoly known as the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) sent the provincial government a "dividend" of $2.06 billion last year.

It also sent nearly half a billion dollars to the federal government in sales tax. LCBO prices contain excise taxes, import duties, "wine levies," "volume levies," "environmental levies," the "LCBO rounding revenue," the "LCBO markup," etc. A hot slurry of taxes. There are even taxes on other taxes. And all of it topped off by the tax imposed on alcohol consumed in restaurants, adding yet another 10 per cent to the total grab. It's quite the machine.

So, given my friend's former taste for good wine and liquor, it's a safe bet he was paying at least a few thousand a year in taxes; money he can now pocket with a grin, having pulled at least one suction tube from the big Canadian revenue-milking machine off his financial teats. The rest of us chumps, generally unaware of the size and tentacles of the machine, will keep right on paying.

Taxes on alcohol are known as Pigovian taxes. They are applied to offset what economists call "negative externalities." (The Canadian Press)

Of course, the LCBO does everything it can to encourage that addled state of ignorance. The taxes they impose are hidden in the bottle price. But they shouldn't be. Here's why:

Taxes on alcohol are known as Pigovian taxes. They are applied to offset what economists call "negative externalities." In the case of booze, that means the social cost caused by excessive drinking – the impact on families, productivity and health.

Tobacco taxes are another example. As are the levies now being imposed in the United States on sugary beverages.

Logically, then, a Pigovian tax should be right there, in black and white, up front and glaring. If the idea is to moderate alcohol consumption, an LCBO receipt for, say, an order of imported wine should have a line in capital letters saying "OF THE $300 YOU JUST PAID, $180 WAS TAXES." (The combined federal-provincial tax bite on table wine is about 60 per cent).

But the LCBO doesn't want you to quit drinking. Quite the opposite. That's the paradox.

Alcohol ads

So, even as it imposes huge taxes to encourage what it calls "socially responsible" drinking — which, if my doctor is to be believed, is no more than a few glasses of wine a week — it is constantly sending out promotions and advertisements, flogging expensive booze, even deploying the ridiculous parlance of wine appreciation (lashings of tobacco and wet earth, deep blackberry brambles, complex notes of licorice and oak, blah, blah, blah….).

Why? Because government needs the money. It needs the tax money it vacuums up from drinkers, and smokers, and just about every other sort of consumer.

To governments, especially liberal governments, most taxes are either Pigovian, meant to modify bad behaviour, or political, meant to encourage what the government sees as good behaviour. Or at least that's the official rationale.

Take another example: parking tickets.

Officially, they are meant to encourage behaviour that increases public safety and orderly flow of traffic.

But look around your city and try to make some sense of the rules. "No Parking" zones seem to be increasingly replaced by higher-tax "No Stopping" zones. And there's little consistency. You can park in front of my neighbour's house, across the street from mine, but park in front of my house and a government agent will hit you with a $70 tax called a ticket. There is no evident reason for it, other than revenue hunger.

In Montreal, parking enforcement accounts for four per cent of municipal revenues: $186 million in 2011. (Pasquale Harrison-Julien/Radio-Canada)

Then there's the tax imposed for overstaying the time you've paid for at a parking meter, which is itself a tax. How is safety and order enhanced by taxing someone $50 or $60 or $70 for violating the terms of a smaller tax?

A few years ago, the City of Winnipeg, which issues the heftiest parking tickets in Canada at an average of $86 each, came right out and ordered its enforcement agents to impose an additional $1.5 million in fines. Just get us more money.

The City of Toronto, which also wants its enforcement agencies to generate more tax revenue, claims it uses parking tickets/taxes to manage traffic congestion, but most of the tickets its agents hand out are away from high-traffic areas.

In Montreal, municipal officials proudly say that the city's ferocious parking enforcement accounts for four per cent of municipal revenues: $186 million in 2011.

• What are the worst places to park in Canada? Here's the data on that
  
• Unfair parking fees on private lots aren't tickets — so you don't need to pay them, expert says
  

Such is Montreal's appetite for parking taxes that a handicapped parking permit is nearly useless in that city, compared to other Canadian metropolises. Montreal offers disabled motorists far fewer protections from its roving tax agents.

Tellingly, scofflaws, the idiots who pile up a ton of unpaid parking or traffic fines — taxes —  can be referred to the Canada Revenue Agency, the big gorilla of tax collection.

And Ontario's so-called "Sunshine List" of public servants who made more than $100,000 last year contained the names of 13 "parking enforcement officers," the modern equivalent of meter maids.
At a guess, all 13 are superstar ticketers: highly valued, super-efficient tax agents.

Chaos by compliance

Anyway, here's a thought experiment:

If we all followed my newly abstemious friend and stopped drinking, and, as I do, strived to obey every single silly little parking and traffic regulation (I've collected two tickets in the past six years, since I began counting, and had one knocked down by half), what would happen?

It would create chaos, just as it would disrupt credit card companies if everyone paid in full each month. Governments would probably respond with higher property or income taxes, just as credit card companies would respond with huge annual fees.

Or maybe police would just start grabbing cash from motorists, the way American cops do.
As Heather Evans of the Canadian Tax Foundation responded, somewhat bemusedly, to my hypothetical question: "Municipalities would have to take some sort of corresponding action."

She says that in fact, demographic shifts in recent years will force Canada's cities to collect a lot more money in the years to come. There will be more, not fewer tickets, and higher, not lower alcohol prices, among other things.

But let's face it, governments are safe. Most of us are not going to stop drinking, the lunacy of smoking will continue and the sheep among us will continue to collect and pay parking tickets.

It's a great tax avoidance opportunity, though, for independent thinkers. On reflection, I intend to drastically reduce or even cease my alcohol consumption, for no reason other than shifting the bill to all the other chumps.