It may be coming folks! Yes, I am off topic again, but this kind of good news causes me to cut short my lunch and splash out this blog entry for you. The CBC is reporting that Jim Flaherty (no not Count Floyd from SCTV, the finance minister) is looking at having some kind of income splitting available to families.
All I can say, is:
This cut could cost Ottawa almost $5 Billion in tax revenue, but would help single income families like mine immeasurably.
Go for it Joe, I mean Jim!
typo in my earlier entry. Han is Jan.
Oops
The group that hosted and attended the national conference on income splitting in Han 2007 on the Hill is well aware of the criticisms raised against such a policy and has good answers. Will it benefit the rich more than the poor? The current system already does and if anything though the rich would benefit, the income splitting option helps reduce tax for the poor more significantly than for the rich. Having tax brackets within income splitting, as in the US, would also make sure the rich did not get excess benefit. Will it encourage women to ‘stay home’? Actually it would enable women to do what they wanted. Most households have more than one income though the second income is often small. Income splitting would not look at who earned the money but at total income and would admit how many share it. It would reduce tax on every arrangement of household, not just the single income household. Yes the single income household, the worst treated right now with a 42% tax penalty, would end its penalty, but so too would the households of two incomes that have a 17% or 25% or 35% penalty now. It levels the field and lets women and men balance roles as they wish.
Third it is backward for the women’s movement? Absolutely not. SOme feminsts who prefer women to have paid income out of the home reel in fear that those who disagree with their goals might be empowered but that is what real liberation is- to be empowered. The roles of care of the young, sick, handicapped, elderly and dying are vital in any society and to recognize them as useful work is the 3rd step in the women’s equality struggle. To deny recognition of this role as its own ‘contribution’ to the household is to keep women’s rights stuck in neutral. The seventies said women were allowed to leave the home and get career equality outside it. But forcing them out of the home has been its own kind of oppression too. Let women be where their hearts say – and recognize their work in either location. Income splitting does that.
I concur, this is excellent news although the usual suspects are already lining up to try and kybosh it.