Canada Income Tax

[bostonkid123]

Originally Posted by botticelli

that was simply misplaced complaints. Unless you make a very high income (such as over $150k), the income tax difference between Canada and the US is very small. For example, for the salary I make, I would be paying pretty much the same income tax if I live in California or New York.

People including myself sometimes complain about other taxes. For example, sales tax, which is 12-15% in Canada versus 5-8% typically in the US. Some other taxes such as gas taxes are much higher. I just came back from the US and the gas price where I went is US 2.5/gallon, which is about CAD$0.82/liter, compared with $1.06/L here in Toronto, a 30% difference - most would be due to taxes I suppose.

Canada also has a competitive business taxes compared with the US in general. To say Canada has a much higher tax regime is simply not true, at least not applied universally.

More complaints are about the higher cost of living, such as consumer produces being priced much higher for exactly the same products (often 100% higher) for no obvious reason.

Pretty spot on.

Same experience here. I actually noticed that tax-withholding amount from my monthly paycheck is slightly smaller than the withheld amount when I was working in America. Also, I don't have to pay separate health insurance premiums in Canada, which can save quite a bit considering that even employer-sponsored insurance in America can easily cost $150-$300 per month for an individual or couple.

The part about lower gas prices is quite interesting. America is one of the anomalies in terms of how low gas prices are. A big part of this is because U.S. federal gas tax has been unchanged since 1993, at 18.4 cents per gallon. This is good for drivers, but has become an extremely controversial issue to lawmakers because America's Highway Trust Fund is directly financed by the federal fuel tax, and fixing it perpetually at 18.4 cents/gallon (while inflation has far outstripped that number since 1993) has already made the national highway trust fund insolvent since August of 2014 - which will have a huge negative effect on infrastructure spending in America in the years to follow unless other sources of funding can be secured or simply raise the 18.4 cent gas tax (e.g. kind of an impossible task given the huge oil and auto lobby in Congress).