Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Hands Not In My Pocket

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has delivered the 2006 budget, and much to the relief of many overburdened Canadian taxpayers, there's a little off just about everybody's load including:

Cutting the GST from 7% to 6% on Canada Day;
Reducing the lowest personal income tax rate from 16% to 15.5%;
Raising the qualifying small business rate income from $300,000 to $400,000;
Tax credits for hiring new apprentices, tools and textbooks;
The $1,200 child care benefit (beer and popcorn for everyone!);
The public transit pass tax credit; etc, etc.

All this and more can be found here.

Thousands of subway-riding Torontonians (like myself) will be very happy to have the Metropass tax credit; I don't know if it will raise ridership, but it might get current passengers to buy passes instead of tokens every week.

And credits for hiring new apprentices makes perfect sense at a time when we're facing shortages of skilled tradesmen.

I'll have more once I've had a further look at the budget papers.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Unfortunetely, when I did my taxes for 05, the 1% tax break was added.
Now it's going up on July 1st. .5%

Adam said...

That's the dumbest spin I've ever heard. How can a majority government ILLEGALLY pass a tax cut?