Quote (18nomaUSEast @ Sep 20 2021 01:44am)
It's an arbitrary distinction ya greedy fuck
Not really. While money is money there's a significant distinction between investing into the S&P 500 every two weeks and letting it sit 30 years vs. generating active business income or employment income and clearly house flippers fall into the active business income as it takes significantly more effort than 1 five second trade every two weeks. I am all for consistency across the board of determining what constitutes as active and what is passive. The gov't has been doing it for years now trying to enact new legislation to determine that distinction and punish those harbouring passive income investments into Small Businesses in attempt to defer income tax until it actually flows back to the individual later in life when they're in a lower bracket or never by passage of ownership to the next generation. I was not against the government when they did that. People harboured millions in corporations and just invested through them to defer tax forever, only the wealthy elite could afford both the legal and CPA fees to get it done as well as setting up and maintaining family trusts. A very one-sided game.
If you up the inclusion rate across all investments, I think It would be highly deferential to many retirees who have around 500K in the bank to retire on, sadly many of which don't use a TFSA but do have some insulation via RRSP's. Think your lines men who had employee stock plans, plant workers, etc. Many of these workers don't have that much generational wealth to be left over to hand down and are on a ski program (spend kids inheritance) have a budget of 1-2 trips per year and will live out a quite retirement life mostly within their own province. Unless the new inclusion rate is going to bolster what they get in CPP and OAS you're going to do some significant harm to that group.
Granted, in the past I have only served rural individuals, so my view is skewed in the type of people I typically deal with, I realize in some areas such as BC and Ontario there's some significant wealth in property that is about to transfer, but that is a different discussion and I also support a higher tax rate for your terminal tax return.