40% of Canadians don’t pay income taxes, which means someone else is picking up the bill | Page 2 | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

Tap and read the report. Very informative.

It’s in the link on the previous reply.

Edit: okay here’s the direct link.
http://www.taxpayer.com/media/.....omeTax.pdf

Even if it were 40% of Canadians that didn't pay any income taxes in 2014, it is not significant.

According to Statistics Canada numbers, Canada had an estimated population of 35,540,419 on July 1, 2014. This is the estimated age distribution. Calculated cumulative numbers show 29% of Canadians were under the age of 25:

I don't expect the 29% under-25 population to be paying much in income taxes, especially the 0 to 9 year olds!

That leaves only 40% - 29% = 11% of the population in the age 25+ population who would not be paying any income taxes.

I would use 100% - 29% = 71% and 71% - 40% = 31% as a number perhaps representing the actual income tax paying population.

But it’s really dependent on what constitutes that 40%. And if those upper echelon incomes are paying 72% of all income taxes, then perhaps the income tax paying population isn’t as large as maybe perceived.

Apparently it’s also the situation with USA income taxes.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/81-million-americans-wont-pay-any-federal-income-taxes-this-year-heres-why-2018-04-16

“These workers who won’t owe any federal income tax include single people, married couples filing jointly and married individuals not filing jointly”

I don’t think that original article, posted in this thread, included children as not paying income tax. The original article needed more clarification and definitely different examples of net zero income tax situations.

It's obviously true that we're not paying our way, that we take out more than we put in, as governments at every level have been racking up debt for decades now to make up the difference.

Aside from many filers not ending up paying any net taxes, there are as well a lot of people working in the underground economy for cash who don't file. Easy to do, CRA expends virtually no effort to find non-filers (that's hard work), they focus on mistakes made on filed returns as that's way easier to do.

It's hard to generalize about who's not pulling their weight. For example, I know a guy who moved his residency and businesses' headquarters to a tax haven last year (he'd had enough) but he's still employing and will continue to employ about 40 Canadians here in Canada. They make a good living and pay income taxes here, so this guy, even though he's paying little or no income tax here himself, is still contributing to the Canadian money pot.

Vatox, you speak of "the rich". Hard to know what that means, what's your working definition of when that line into "rich" is crossed?

Vatox said
I call BS on that title of 40% of Canadians paying zero net income taxes. It’s completely misleading. It’s 40% of income earners or 40% of tax returns. Some may not even file a tax return, but I accept the 40% as meaning income earners in general.

Edit: it probably doesn’t just include workers either, It could easily be an old lady with a meager cpp, oas, gis.  

The 40% in the National Post article refers to Canadian households, not persons and not income earners.

Yes, a household of one elderly widow with a meager CPP, OAS, and GIS counts as one such household in the 40%.

It is quite plausible that 40% of the Canadian households don't play any net income taxes. It is even plausible that 40% of Canadian individuals don't either.

According to the Globe & Mail article Top It Up referred to, about 30% of tax filers pay zero and another 44 - 30.6 = 13.4% pay something, but less than 5%:

… Indeed, one in three (30.6 per cent) of all tax filers pay no income tax at all, since their credits and deductions exceed their income. Almost half of all tax filers (44.0 per cent) pay an effective rate of less than 5.0 per cent. …

That less-than-5% paid could be more than offset by Canada Child Benefit and GST/HST rebates.

Vatox, be careful of looking just at income re who's rich. For example, I know a very elderly lady who lives in a house worth about $1.2 million and who has an annual income, including about $18K of gov't pensions, of maybe $30K. Her medical and personal care expenses are substantial. As she will probably only live another 2 years or so, she won't spend much of her total wealth. To you, is she "rich"?

Bill said
Vatox, be careful of looking just at income re who's rich. For example, I know a very elderly lady who lives in a house worth about $1.2 million and who has an annual income, including about $18K of gov't pensions, of maybe $30K. Her medical and personal care expenses are substantial. As she will probably only live another 2 years or so, she won't spend much of her total wealth. To you, is she "rich"?  

I say not rich. I look at income sources and that old lady isn’t pulling 100k income. I would say that, health issues aside, a paid off home, no debts and 30k income, she is solid.