Decompression time
Between my health crisis, exam stress, frantic job searching and training at new job & soccer withdrawl, the last couple of weeks have been rough. Virtually no blogging has been the result of all this. I'm glad to report I'm back to full health, and after writing my last midterm this morning (they all went quite well) & having my final training shift at work tonight I'll hopefully be in the groove and back to my relatively productive (and regularly posting) self. It's nice.
I haven't caught much news this week other than Colin Powell's resignation from the Bush administration which reduces semi-rational minds in the administration from one to zero.
What may be of interest is something I learned in my business marketing class this week regarding corporate taxation. As we all know, large corporations pay ridiculously low rates of tax. In theory, I think this is a bad thing. An interesting twist to the story is that a corporation pays tax in the country that it's head office is in, regardless of where it does business. Let's say we've got a corporation with factories & employees in London, Ontario. If Ontario raises its taxes on corporations like this one, they can move their head office to Detroit and avoid the tax hike. Now all the Canadian dollars you and I spend on their products goes to the residents of Michigan, not Ontario. The same works for Detroit based companies. If Ontario makes it desirable to run their business from here, we Ontarians can fund our social programs with a bunch of American consumer dollars.
Also, if a big company like GMC gets a tax break, those $100 million aren't lining the CEO's pockets. Sure, a few of them are, but most of them are invested in the business helping to create new jobs and to keep existing jobs around. In principle, I still have opposition to the idea of taxing corporations less than individuals, but in practice I'm not so sure anymore. The question may be which do I value more: that Canadians have well funded social & health care programs or that we tax the hell out of the man.
I haven't caught much news this week other than Colin Powell's resignation from the Bush administration which reduces semi-rational minds in the administration from one to zero.
What may be of interest is something I learned in my business marketing class this week regarding corporate taxation. As we all know, large corporations pay ridiculously low rates of tax. In theory, I think this is a bad thing. An interesting twist to the story is that a corporation pays tax in the country that it's head office is in, regardless of where it does business. Let's say we've got a corporation with factories & employees in London, Ontario. If Ontario raises its taxes on corporations like this one, they can move their head office to Detroit and avoid the tax hike. Now all the Canadian dollars you and I spend on their products goes to the residents of Michigan, not Ontario. The same works for Detroit based companies. If Ontario makes it desirable to run their business from here, we Ontarians can fund our social programs with a bunch of American consumer dollars.
Also, if a big company like GMC gets a tax break, those $100 million aren't lining the CEO's pockets. Sure, a few of them are, but most of them are invested in the business helping to create new jobs and to keep existing jobs around. In principle, I still have opposition to the idea of taxing corporations less than individuals, but in practice I'm not so sure anymore. The question may be which do I value more: that Canadians have well funded social & health care programs or that we tax the hell out of the man.
