Lower Taxes Make Our Economy Stronger

Our Conservative Government has been a strong supporter of lower taxes since first elected in 2006. We understand that lower taxes make our economy stronger and create good, long-term jobs for today and tomorrow.

That’s why we’re delivering historic tax relief and cutting taxes in every way government collects them: from personal, consumption, business, excise taxes and more.

Since 2006, the Conservative Government has cut over 120 taxes. We reduced the GST, increased the amount Canadians earn tax free, introduced pension income splitting and introduced important tax credits like the Canada Employment Credit, the Working Income Tax Benefit, the Child Tax Credit and much more. We reduced overall tax burden to its lowest level in nearly 50 years and removed over 1 million low-income Canadians completely from the tax rolls.

Overall, total savings for a typical family is over $3,000 – leaving more money in Canadians pockets – where it rightfully belongs.

Tax Freedom Day, the day Canadians start working for themselves after paying off all the taxes they owe to all levels of government, has gotten earlier and earlier under our Government. In 2005, under the tax-and-spend Liberals, Tax Freedom Day was on June 26th Now, in 2011, Tax Freedom Day is on June 6th – over twenty days earlier!

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Our Conservative government’s clear and positive record of allowing Canadians to keep much more of their own hard-earned money is great news and one of our proudest achievements. Our record also includes giving Canada’s job-creating businesses more freedom to create jobs and make further investments by improving tax competitiveness, this includes:

· reducing business taxes

· eliminating the federal capital tax

· providing tax relief to our manufacturing sector

· and much more

We also recognized the vital role small business plays in the economy and job creation. That’s why, since 2006, we’ve also lowered their tax bill to help them succeed, such as:

· reducing the small business tax rate from 12% to 11%

· increasing the amount of income eligible for the lower small business tax rate from $300,000 to $500,000

· increasing the Lifetime Capital Gains Exemption for small businesses from $500,000 to $750,000

We’re doing even more to help small businesses to build on our record. For instance, in the Next Phase of Canada’s Economic Action Plan (EAP), a new Hiring Credit that will encourage some 525,000 Canadian small businesses hire new employees with a one-year EI break was announced. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business was extremely pleased to see the new Hiring Credit (its top budget priority) included in the EAP, as it is a major help to small firms that are growing their workforces.

While our Conservative Government has a strong and proven record of lowering taxes for Canadian families, seniors, business (especially small business, and more); the NDP’s record is dramatically different. NDP Members of Parliament have a proven record of pushing a high-tax agenda by voting ‘no’ again and again in the House of Commons against our Conservative Government’s initiatives to lower the tax burden.

The NDP voted against reducing the GST, against pension income splitting, against reducing the small business tax rate and against the Small Businesses Hiring Credit. The NDP also voted against our tax relief for families and businesses each and every time. Even more troubling, the socialist NDP has repeatedly protested and mocked our efforts to leave more money with everyday Canadian families and businesses.

What’s more, public statements by NDP Leader Jack Layton and his Members of Parliament clearly underline their fundamental belief that Canadian families and business should be forced to send more and more of their hard-earned money to government. Here are just a few examples:

· The NDP Leader has declared – and I quote: “tax cuts that have no basis in terms of moving the economy forward, such as the GST proposal … are not the wise choice,”

· The NDP MP for Hamilton Mountain bemoaned – and I quote: “the Prime Minister is picking up the (tax fighter) mantle … … the Conservatives are intent on taking us in the wrong direction.”

· The NDP MP for Victoria complained – and I quote: “the Conservatives have a single-minded obsession with tax cuts that is not shared by the majority of Canadians … all they’ve delivered are tax cuts.”

Even worse, while our Conservative Government is promoting positive economic policies that would give businesses more freedom to grow and create even more Canadian jobs, the NDP has been promoting negative job-killing economic policies. Specifically, they are targeting job-creating businesses with massive business tax hikes, along with massive EI and CPP premiums increased.

As businesses try to rebuild and recover from the recession, the NDP wants to slap a huge $10 billion a year tax hike on them – something that would hit small businesses very hard. A $10 billion a year NDP tax hike would mean losing good Canadians jobs and jeopardizing the financial security of hard-working Canadian families

Small business knows that Canadians can’t afford that – they know we can’t afford higher taxes and can’t afford the job killing policies of the NDP. This is why small business strongly stated their objections to the NDP’s tax-hike plan during the recent election campaign.

Small business is also extremely concerned with the NDP plan to hike EI and CPP premiums. As we all know, the NDP is a strong supporter of a 45 day work year – something that will drastically increase EI premiums by a whopping 35% – and other legislation to dramatically expand EI as demonstrated last fall.

Even worse, the NDP wants to dramatically increase CPP premiums by doubling them.

While our Conservative Government is focused on keeping taxes low and helping create jobs, the socialist NDP sadly wants to raise taxes and kill jobs, despite today’s economic realities.