tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11679714.post6500721244117894962..comments2024-03-28T03:32:41.433-04:00Comments on Half an Hour: Where's Our Corporate Tax Referendum?Stephen Downeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06140591903467372209noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11679714.post-29444975310252671652013-02-06T15:32:20.863-05:002013-02-06T15:32:20.863-05:00I must say that I agree with everything you wrote....I must say that I agree with everything you wrote. I find New Brunswick's stance on taxation, provincial debt, the deficit, and public services to be extremely regressive. Remember when finance minister Blaine Higgs told the CBC that New Brunswickers must "want less" in the way of services for their tax dollars? Meanwhile, his government goes and cuts property taxes for big business, and refuses to restore previous corporate tax rates that were lowered by Shawn Graham's Liberal government. (The NB Liberal and NB Conservative parties have such eerily similar policies that they're pretty much the same party, in my view). In effect, the government is saying that regular people have to accept reductions in their quality of life so that large corporations can rake in even bigger profits.<br /><br />Such issues also illustrate a real problem with New Brunswick media. The media have limited the bounds of debate by not engaging in any kind of real dialogue about the relation between corporate taxation, government budgets, and public services. They haven't even noted that New Brunswick has a long history of gradually altering its tax code to be more favourable to large corporations (though not so much small businesses). Remember when they began to abolish the Large Corporation Capital Tax starting in 2005, and then it was fully abolished by 2009? That tax raised $47.3 million in 2004 alone. That is a lot of money for such a small province. And yet, not one peep from the Irving media, the CBC, or any other mainstream media source, which would rather report on entertaining but trivial events than a dry, cerebral, but very important issue like tax reform.<br /><br />And so the job of raising awareness of these problems falls to people like you and me - independent writers, journalists, bloggers, whatever you want to call us. Keep up the good work.Julian Renaudhttp://julianrenaud.canoreply@blogger.com