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Fewer workers means less spent on wages, which means less contributed in income taxes. These changes reduce government's profits while increasing the oil compan

Fewer workers means less spent on wages, which means less contributed in income taxes. These changes reduce government's profits while increasing the oil company's profits. The new NDP government promised as a part of their campaign to review royalty rates. This seems like an argument that they'll need to increase even just to keep revenue constant.

adventured 11y ago
Canadian corporations pay taxes on their profits. They also distribute income to shareholders, who then pay taxes. If they pay their execs rich salaries, those execs pay rich taxes. All corporate profit eventually ends up in the hands of an individual over time, and Canada has relatively high personal income taxes. It also varies by the country of course. Oil companies in the US pay among the highest tax rates. Exxon and Chevron for example typically pay 30%+ rates. Last three years for Exxon: Income before tax: $188 billion; Income tax expense: $73 billion; Net income: $110 billion Some of it is also double taxed, so the real tax rate is even higher than just counting the corporate income tax.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- justonepost 11y ago
  If it were up to me, all of our money would be only be taxed when we withdrew it from our bank accounts to pay for stuff, with tax credits for the poor so it's not regressive.
  - thrill 11y ago
    Tax imports ... and nothing else.
- slavik81 11y ago
  I'm not really familiar with corporate taxation, but a lot of those taxes sound like they might go to different places. As an Albertan, it matters to me whether money goes to my provincial government or whether it goes to some other province or country's government. The people of Alberta own the unextracted oil in this province. They, via the government, sell it to companies who extract and profit from it. Just saying, if the people of Alberta can raise their prices, they will. They've certainly been talking about it.
- anigbrowl 11y ago
  Not all shareholders live and pay taxes in the same place that the displaced workers do. Also, rates of taxation on dividends and capital gains often differ from those on wages, though I haven't looked up the specific rates in Canada.
  - adventured 11y ago
    Dividends and long-term capital gains are mostly a form of double taxation. That's why there is a strong argument for the rates not being as high as traditional income.
    - anigbrowl 11y ago
      I'm no tax lawyer, but my understanding is that income trusts provide a way around this, and this particular arrangement is available to Canadian firms: http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/deductdividendpayments.asp http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/deductdividendpay... I'd like to believe that it all evens out in the end, but the reality seems to be that many firms are able to avoid a lot of tax through a combination of aggressive accounting and lobbying for either special tax treatment or subsidies of one sort or another. I agree with you that robotic labor may well fall subject to taxation and if so this will be why - many people don't feel they're competing on a level playing field with the owners of capital.
  - Shivetya 11y ago
    Well countries will soon feel the pain cities, counties, and even states have felt. This is a global economy and more people than ever have the mobility to seek places to live where the think the costs are more to their liking. So instead of going full stupid with taxes and regulations governments need to learn how to do the same or more with less and how to compete.
- jqm 11y ago
  I'd venture that less of the money from shareholder distributed income is spent on goods and services than that of employee wages. Particularly, as another poster pointed out, locally.
melling 11y ago
Hasn't the luddite argument already been addressed by economists in general? Do we need to have it every time? Remember when a high percentage of humans worked in agricultural jobs?
- justonepost 11y ago
  The argument is not luddite or the oppression of technology. The argument is that we need to revamp our economic system to allow for the displacement of workers. The reality is that more and more jobs are 'bullshit' jobs and more people are becoming rapidly economically irrelevant.
  - adventured 11y ago
    Where is this occurring exactly? In nearly every major economy, the people are better off today than they were 100 years ago, or 50 years ago. The US median may be the sole exception, due to having temporarily inherited the global manufacturing base all for itself after WW2. Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Czech, Slovakia, Ireland, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Poland, Russia, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil - the people in these countries, in median economic terms, are better off today than at any other time in world history. Even the French, whose economy has been stagnant for 20 years, are incredibly rich when it comes to median net wealth. In France it's $140,000 +/- median net wealth per adult, among the highest on earth. The Japanese are in all sorts of trouble economically, and their people, in median terms, are far better off today than they were in 1920 or in 1970.
    - justonepost 11y ago
      What you see is people are working 'bullshit' jobs in order to keep up with consumption. Sure, these jobs exist, but they are mostly pointless. Our economic system is creating these jobs because of ZIRP. Witness the pointless startups getting funded (they're not ALL pointless, of course).. God forbid the fed ever increased interest rates and actually expected people to work in real jobs that produced something real.
ticksoft 11y ago
In addition to those government issues, there's less cash flowing from the non-existent workers to [local] businesses, which means that infrastructure from those businesses is no longer sustainable. The internet does that too. Futurologists of the past speculated that salaries earned by machines would be shared out to civilisation (to allow us to stop working), but it's gone in another direction.
- justonepost 11y ago
  Yes, rather than decreased work all we have is increased consumption (which is slowly destroying the planet).
- adventured 11y ago
  Robotic labor will be taxed and regulated in the near future, in most countries, to force such outcomes. Restrictions will be put on robot output or on how many human-hours equivalent they can operate per day. Within a decade or so we'll see marches in the streets by lower-income laborers arguing for these changes. Robots don't vote, so it's obvious what will occur eventually.
  - Shivetya 11y ago
    the taxes exist already through tax on the companies profits. there will plenty of work for techs who work on robotic machinery, its not simply electronics, there is hydraulics, and more involved. government increases the cost of each worker to the point that companies are forced to find alternatives that are cheaper. from mandated pay, benefits, employer paid fees and taxes, and costs of implementing safety regulations, support staff and their inherent costs, its not hard to see that to compete on a world market that automation will be used. many jobs out there now currently have human robots for the most part, performing the same task over and over with little variation but a whole lot of opportunity to screw up. the labor component simply moves into new opportunities, including as stated into maintaining the new machines
  - steve19 11y ago
    alternatively, they could decrease income tax so that salaries can be lowered but net income remains the same (or even increases) to make robots less competitive.
CyberDildonics 11y ago
Oh look, incredible automation technology dominated by people who are terrified of world economic collapse due to people not getting payed to drive a vehicle.

adventured 11y ago

Canadian corporations pay taxes on their profits. They also distribute income to shareholders, who then pay taxes. If they pay their execs rich salaries, those execs pay rich taxes. All corporate profit eventually ends up in the hands of an individual over time, and Canada has relatively high personal income taxes. It also varies by the country of course. Oil companies in the US pay among the highest tax rates. Exxon and Chevron for example typically pay 30%+ rates. Last three years for Exxon: Income before tax: $188 billion; Income tax expense: $73 billion; Net income: $110 billion Some of it is also double taxed, so the real tax rate is even higher than just counting the corporate income tax.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
justonepost 11y ago
If it were up to me, all of our money would be only be taxed when we withdrew it from our bank accounts to pay for stuff, with tax credits for the poor so it's not regressive.
- thrill 11y ago
  Tax imports ... and nothing else.
slavik81 11y ago
I'm not really familiar with corporate taxation, but a lot of those taxes sound like they might go to different places. As an Albertan, it matters to me whether money goes to my provincial government or whether it goes to some other province or country's government. The people of Alberta own the unextracted oil in this province. They, via the government, sell it to companies who extract and profit from it. Just saying, if the people of Alberta can raise their prices, they will. They've certainly been talking about it.
anigbrowl 11y ago
Not all shareholders live and pay taxes in the same place that the displaced workers do. Also, rates of taxation on dividends and capital gains often differ from those on wages, though I haven't looked up the specific rates in Canada.
- adventured 11y ago
  Dividends and long-term capital gains are mostly a form of double taxation. That's why there is a strong argument for the rates not being as high as traditional income.
  - anigbrowl 11y ago
    I'm no tax lawyer, but my understanding is that income trusts provide a way around this, and this particular arrangement is available to Canadian firms: http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/deductdividendpayments.asp http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/06/deductdividendpay... I'd like to believe that it all evens out in the end, but the reality seems to be that many firms are able to avoid a lot of tax through a combination of aggressive accounting and lobbying for either special tax treatment or subsidies of one sort or another. I agree with you that robotic labor may well fall subject to taxation and if so this will be why - many people don't feel they're competing on a level playing field with the owners of capital.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  Well countries will soon feel the pain cities, counties, and even states have felt. This is a global economy and more people than ever have the mobility to seek places to live where the think the costs are more to their liking. So instead of going full stupid with taxes and regulations governments need to learn how to do the same or more with less and how to compete.
jqm 11y ago
I'd venture that less of the money from shareholder distributed income is spent on goods and services than that of employee wages. Particularly, as another poster pointed out, locally.

melling 11y ago

Hasn't the luddite argument already been addressed by economists in general? Do we need to have it every time? Remember when a high percentage of humans worked in agricultural jobs?

justonepost 11y ago
The argument is not luddite or the oppression of technology. The argument is that we need to revamp our economic system to allow for the displacement of workers. The reality is that more and more jobs are 'bullshit' jobs and more people are becoming rapidly economically irrelevant.
- adventured 11y ago
  Where is this occurring exactly? In nearly every major economy, the people are better off today than they were 100 years ago, or 50 years ago. The US median may be the sole exception, due to having temporarily inherited the global manufacturing base all for itself after WW2. Germany, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Czech, Slovakia, Ireland, Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Poland, Russia, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil - the people in these countries, in median economic terms, are better off today than at any other time in world history. Even the French, whose economy has been stagnant for 20 years, are incredibly rich when it comes to median net wealth. In France it's $140,000 +/- median net wealth per adult, among the highest on earth. The Japanese are in all sorts of trouble economically, and their people, in median terms, are far better off today than they were in 1920 or in 1970.
  - justonepost 11y ago
    What you see is people are working 'bullshit' jobs in order to keep up with consumption. Sure, these jobs exist, but they are mostly pointless. Our economic system is creating these jobs because of ZIRP. Witness the pointless startups getting funded (they're not ALL pointless, of course).. God forbid the fed ever increased interest rates and actually expected people to work in real jobs that produced something real.

ticksoft 11y ago

In addition to those government issues, there's less cash flowing from the non-existent workers to [local] businesses, which means that infrastructure from those businesses is no longer sustainable. The internet does that too. Futurologists of the past speculated that salaries earned by machines would be shared out to civilisation (to allow us to stop working), but it's gone in another direction.

justonepost 11y ago
Yes, rather than decreased work all we have is increased consumption (which is slowly destroying the planet).
adventured 11y ago
Robotic labor will be taxed and regulated in the near future, in most countries, to force such outcomes. Restrictions will be put on robot output or on how many human-hours equivalent they can operate per day. Within a decade or so we'll see marches in the streets by lower-income laborers arguing for these changes. Robots don't vote, so it's obvious what will occur eventually.
- Shivetya 11y ago
  the taxes exist already through tax on the companies profits. there will plenty of work for techs who work on robotic machinery, its not simply electronics, there is hydraulics, and more involved. government increases the cost of each worker to the point that companies are forced to find alternatives that are cheaper. from mandated pay, benefits, employer paid fees and taxes, and costs of implementing safety regulations, support staff and their inherent costs, its not hard to see that to compete on a world market that automation will be used. many jobs out there now currently have human robots for the most part, performing the same task over and over with little variation but a whole lot of opportunity to screw up. the labor component simply moves into new opportunities, including as stated into maintaining the new machines
- steve19 11y ago
  alternatively, they could decrease income tax so that salaries can be lowered but net income remains the same (or even increases) to make robots less competitive.

CyberDildonics 11y ago

Oh look, incredible automation technology dominated by people who are terrified of world economic collapse due to people not getting payed to drive a vehicle.