Colby Cosh picks up a comment from a recent post of mine, and points out that some Canadians do in fact have the freedom to be rich. Well, actually, just that some Canadians have gotten rich. When they try to expatriate their fortunes (as the Seagram's family successfully did a few years ago; link, anyone?) CCRA gets a bit huffy at them.
But to give Colby his due, I failed to explain the real roots of my problem. You see, although I do live in Edmonton, I am a U.S. citizen (da da da DUM). What's more, to take a page from another blogger:
I write software for a living, and am a capitalist pig small business owner.
When my wife and I moved to Alberta from California, we left a 22% corporate tax bracket and 24% personal tax bracket to come to a place where the tax rates are about 20-24% personal and 51% corporate.
Yes, five-one percent.
WOW THAT'S HIGH. That means that every business expense is half-off, courtesy of money I don't have to send to the government, if I can spend it now.
Mind you, 50% isn't the standard small business tax rate. It should be more like around 17-24% for a company of our size and revenue. What causes problems is that we're not a CCPC (Canadian-Controlled Private Corporation), and as such, we have to follow the rules on Form T-666, Tax Form for Evil Foreign Investors. Our guess is that this part of the Canadian tax system is designed to prevent people from exporting profits from Canadian businesses back to the place where the capital came from. When you get into this area, you discover several wonderful things:
And the high income tax rate there to encourage you to spend money this tax year in the Canadian economy.
But ultimately, I don't think Canada is a bad place to live. (Was a bit of a shock when we filed the form.) I was talking about any proposed "solution" to the income distribution "problem" when I said I wanted to keep the freedom to be rich.
And the beer here is far too good to dump on Colby's head.