AMERICA: VOTE For Kerry to get the SAME FREE Healthcare as Canadians!I AM CANADIAN! PLEASE, READ ON

vanity

[forYourChildrenVote4Bush]

I AM CANADIAN! PLEASE, READ ON,

[The Hound Passer]

I think you are preaching to the choir here. The Canadian system is an anathema to Republicans because, while it gives everyone equal access, it also makes everyone equally worse off.

Both Democrats and Republicans seek to equalize the classes. Here is the difference:

Republican utopia is to bring everyone's standard of living up to that of the wealthiest.

Democratic/Socialist utopia is to bring everyone's standard of living down to that of the poorest.

The unknown is, which philosophy does the "independent" voter find more appealing. I would hope the GOP, but the Dems know how to dress up a pig mighty perty.

[Hot Tabasco]

OUR SYSTEM DOES NOT WORK

Oh stop it now! It will, just give it a little more time and a lot more money......

Just a thought but maybe you should consider raising the taxes on the rich....

[drtom]

48% I pay, and I do not make much, just over $50K

Where do you live in Canada? Our Canadian employees make $85,000 (Cdn) and only pay about 30% in taxes plus $54 a month in health fees.

We are broke. Our system is broke!!!

I thought your Government just announced over $9 billion in surplus? Sounds hardly broke to me.

[blinachka]

Is blinachka Russian? Pycckuu?

Da! : )

[forYourChildrenVote4Bush]

No one who makes 85K gets taxed at a rate of 30% (I think not even people in Alberta, which the province which has the lowest tax). If your employees are in example sales then they can claim expenses and bring down their taxable income.

I don't know where you get your info, we do have a surplus for the QUARTERLY (I do not think it is 9 billion), but the overall deficit is 500 billion for a country with 31million people.

[forYourChildrenVote4Bush]

About the 54$ a month, that goes to pay stuff like prescription drugs, stuff that the government doesn't cover, but you know there is a CAP on the amount and this amount depends on the Insurance company.

[forYourChildrenVote4Bush]

Also, when you Americans buy a home in your country you can deduct the interest rate of the mortgage on your income, we cannot.

We have to PAY 2% of the value of our home to the government for ever and ever, I know you have something similar but I do not know your rate...

[drtom]

Let's see, I just dug out one of our people's paystubs. He is a field technician for firewalls. There are no expenses, he is fully salaried. We pay him biweekly $3,101.62 for an annual total of approx. $81,000. Out of those $3,100 we remit $519.17 to the Canadian federal Government, $222.59 to the Government of British Columbia, $197.53 into our company's retirement plan. On top of that we remit rougly $70 for your Government's Pension Plan (CPP), $30 for the federal unemployment insurance, and $54 for health insurance. So all in all deductions add up to $1,092 which is 35%. If I ignore the company pension plan (which is optional and an employee benefit as we match the payment) it adds up to 29%. Most of our employees average $1000 refund on their tax return. The numbers have been virtually identical for the past years.

So what are you talking about, no one who makes 85K gets taxed at a rate of 30% ?

Re the surplus, I got my info from the Canadian Press. Your Government reported a surplus of 9.1 billion Canadian for the last FISCAL YEAR (not quarterly as you said). And you do NOT have a DEFICIT of 500 billion, you have a DEBT of 500 billion. Ever looked at the US numbers for deficit and debt? Our debt now stands at almost $7,500,000,000,000 according to the Treasury Dept. which translates into a bit more than $25,000 US per capita. In return, your debt is about $16,000 Canadian per capita. In other words our debt per capita is about twice as high as yours.

I don't think you are very good with numbers. Pretty sad if I down here know more about your tax rates and national surplus than you do.

[drtom]

I am currently looking into buying a house in BC and the only tax there is is property tax. The latter is dependent on the city and only a portion of this goes to the provincial Government. In fact, there is a grant from the BC Government if this were my primary residence. If I used that grant (which I of course can't but you could), the city I am looking at levies a tax of 1.043% of the property value. Pretty sweet deal, if you asked me.

[forYourChildrenVote4Bush]

It just means, that when he FILES HIS TAX RETURN HE WILL HAVE TO PAY THE GOVERNMENT ACCORDING TO HIS TAX bracket...

You Don't get it...

He might be paying 30 % now but at the end of the year when he files he will be paying his due amount...

The company he works for is not retaining enough of his pay for taxes...IT HAPPENS, and at the End of the year he will be in for a SHOCK when he realizes he needs to pay his due share...

Example: If someone earns 30000$ per YEAR and his company only retains 2% for taxes, does that mean that he only pays 2% taxes, NO! At the end of the year, the employee will have to make up the difference according to his tax bracket...That is how it WORKS in CANADA..WHAT YOU SEE IS NOT WHAT YOU GET!!! GET IT!

[forYourChildrenVote4Bush]

ARE you AMERICAN...?

The only GRANT that we are allowed for first time buyers is not a grant. We as Canadians have something called the RRSP (Retirement savings plan). This RRSP can only be touched after you retire and is subject to taxes. The only other way you can have access to this money is if you are a first time buyer of a house and you are permitted to remove 20000$ without being taxed on it, BUT, there is a catch, YOU MUST REPAY this money within 13 years or a minimum of 1500$ per year.

You are lucky to pay only 1% property taxes, it depends the province/area..we pay here about 2 - 2.5 property taxes per year for as long as we own the property + school taxes of 1/2% per year

[drtom]

Are you blind? Read the flipping post properly.

Every year he receives a REFUND of approximately $1000. And he has done so for the past six years.

Also, if we repeatedly remitted less than the prescribed rate our company would have to pay a tax withholding penalty. The remittance is prescribed by your finance department's tax deduction tables and calculated so that there is a slight overpay every time. A company CANNOT remit 2% and then have the employee foot the bill at the end of the year.

Gosh, you don't have a CLUE how your system works, do you?

[drtom]

Here, look for yourself: Canadian Payroll Deduction Tables"

Look for "bi-weekly deductions, 26 pay periods per year". The $3101 bracket says $600 in federal taxes. Feel free to do the same with your provincial tables. Don't tell me that we are all home-free down here while you drown in taxes.

[drtom]

I am looking at a sample property tax form that my realtor up in BC sent me. There are two annual grants, one if this is your primary residence, another one if you are over 65. The property I am looking at had an assessed value of $441,000 Cdn in 2004. The taxes were $5300 before the home owner's grant or $4600 thereafter. Since this won't be my primary residence I won't be eligible for the grant, but everyone else in our BC office is for their property.

[John_7Diamonds]

There dental is free tooth extraction when they start to rot.

You can pick out the British on vacation in the carribean by how ugly their teeth are.

John

[forYourChildrenVote4Bush]

Mr. Know it all:

If you wanna call it debt instead of deficit that's your perogative. The debt is the accumulated deficit, big deal. For years and years Canada was having deficits in the billions each year. The government medicare program sucks. We wait hours and hours in emrgency rooms like a banana republic. The tax rates differ in different provinces. We in Quebec have two civil services, one at the federal level and another at the Quebec level. That's where our tax dollars go. Our net pay is not sufficient. In Quebec, when you go over $100,000, you start to get taxed at the highest rate of 48%. That's the equivalent of 70,000 US. Imagive the highest bracket starts at 70,000 US!! Boy we're so rich. In fact we can't deduct mortgage interest or property taxes. The average american claims that as an itemized deduction and effectively reduces his tax rate to below 25% even for taxable income in excess of $ 100,000 US.
Almost every country in Europe allows a mortgage interest deduction. So please give it up. You pay less taxes in the U.S. and that's it.

It's about time we started getting surpluses. In addition to the income taxes, they have just raised property taxes which amount to approx 2-2.5% of the estimated municipal value of the property. In addition to all this we pay 7% GST and another 7.5% Quebec QST on every single purchase of goods or services. We're taxed to the death.

I sure hope they will pay down the debt with the surplus and not waste it on their pathetic government programs. Just the CBC gets 800,000,000 a year. What a f...g waste especially listening to their news programs, it makes the stomach turn.

The US is a very rich country. They have a lot more room to tax people than they do over here. They can just raise their sales tax rate a couple of percentage points and wipe out their deficit.

Goodbye.

[drtom]

If you wanna call it debt instead of deficit that's your perogative.

No, that's proper terminology. Deficit is an annual budgetary term. And both our debt AND our deficit are way higher than yours. Both in actual dollars AND per capita. 7.5 trillion dollars. Even for the most powerful economy on the planet, that is no laughing matter. And it continues to rise by about 1.6 billion a day. While you are paying yours off, we add "one of yours" to ours, about every nine months. Our interest payments exceed your entire debt.

You pay less taxes in the U.S. and that's it.

Yes, you do. I never disputed that. But don't make it sound like it's all free down here.

The average american claims that as an itemized deduction and effectively reduces his tax rate to below 25% even for taxable income in excess of $ 100,000 US.

So? The equivalent in BC or Alberta is around 33%. Then you add our health insurance and all of a sudden we're a few percentage points apart. I have friends moving from Silicon Valley to BC because they get more for their money than in California. They are always shocked to see how much they keep up there and how much reality differs from the rumor of the overtaxed country.

The US is a very rich country. They have a lot more room to tax people than they do over here. They can just raise their sales tax rate a couple of percentage points and wipe out their deficit.

No, we can't. We don't have a general federal sales tax and trying to implement one would be political suicide. Instead we irresponsibly watch our debt go up and hope that one day it'll all miraculously go away. Like in a Disney movie. It's not gonna happen.