B-016: National Defense Contribution Act, 1674

[Alfonso Velez]

Madam Speaker,

While I was happy to agree to a couple of the amendments offered by the Honourable Gentleman, I'm afraid I could not agree to the remaining three for the following reasons. I will go through them one by one.

As to the first amendment that would extend income taxes to corporations, I strongly oppose this. Corporations create the jobs we need to stimulate our economy and are already burdened with enough regulation and taxation. While I dislike taxation at all, my calculations arrived at an income tax because there is no existing income tax on a national level. Applying these taxes to all business would have a terrible impact on our economy--particularly with small businesses--and therefore we will strongly be opposing this amendment.

My objection to the second amendment is that I believe that 100% of income earned by active duty military should be exempted from these taxes, not just the income they may earn for their service. While I agree that this is unlikely to be of much significance either way as most of our men and women in the armed forces earn their money through their direct pay, I believe a total exemption is important on principle. We are asking citizens to make sacrifices to ensure the protection of the Republic. These citizens have already made great sacrifices by serving in the armed forces and are even in situations where they put their lives at risk for their service to the Republic. The very least we can do, therefore, is exempt them entirely from this assessment.

My objection to the remaining amendment is that I believe we have struck the right balance of dealing with capital gains and other forms of trading income in this tax. I would rather view capital gains as "earned income" rather than get into the nitty-gritty of picking and choosing which forms of investment we will tax and at what rate. Similarly, I believe that the sterner financial penalties for failing to pay tax which are written now--as well as the great deal of discretion given to decide what range of penalty to give considering the circumstances of the situation--strike the right balance as presently written by the bill.

Given the totality of all of these concerns, I respectfully ask this Parliament to oppose these remaining amendments and leave the bill in its present form.