Corporate Tax Cuts: Serious, But Unimportant

Out of all the issues to go to electoral war over, why a 1.5 per cent reduction in corporate taxes?

The federal parties shouldn’t call an election now, and they certainly shouldn’t call one over the issue of corporate tax cuts, writes the Victoria Times Colonist’s editorial board. Any way you slice it, tax cuts for corporations are “simply not that significant” according to the paper’s editors, because the Conservative’s proposed 1.5 per cent reduction in taxes only represents an equivalent of one per cent of government spending, and conversely its economic benefits would hardly redraw the Canadian economic landscape. The paper concludes that should the parties force an election over the issue, it would “demonstrate a shared commitment to putting partisan advantage ahead of the public interest.” The writers in The Mark Newsroom can think of more glamorous issues to call an election over (Afghan detainees and Harper’s compulsive prorogation come to mind), but we’re not surprised tax cuts might trigger a vote. These parties disagree over lots of things, and the next election will be about all of those issues. The tax cut issue might just be the most politically expedient thing to trigger a vote over at this time.

Writing in the Ottawa Citizen, William Watson takes the opposite approach and argues corporate tax cuts are the perfect election issue, because it will give Canadians a chance to have a rational discussion about a serious issue. “If a political party started running 30-second ads explaining what it thought the effects of its corporate tax policies would be, rather than attacking the other guy's travel history, it would do both itself and the country some good,” he writes. Fair enough, we’re not big fans of the recent spate of attack ads, but if a political party started running 30-second ads explaining its tax policy we suspect the average Canadian would probably change the channel at the six-second mark. Nor would Michael Ignatieff attempting to rally Canadians with the cry that “Liberals will be controlling spending by not proposing anything in our next platform that can't be financed without adding to the deficit!” be a rousing spectacle. Let’s hope there's a middle ground.