Another beneficial side-effect has been that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people have sharpened their pencils and revived the math skills they learned in school.
The budget has turned the citizenry into a bunch of math nerds — and I mean that in a good way.
But there seem to be a lot of people, including Premier Dwight Ball, who apparently don’t realize numbers are not necessarily fact — end of argument. Numbers also contain a value judgment.
Ponder the popular slogan, “Make the rich pay.” It is catchy and fits well on a protest sign, and can sound terrific when chanted at a rally. It’s certainly better than its longer but more accurate cousin, “Society needs an equitable income tax system based on the principle of progression.”
A question of fact would be, “Can the rich pay?”
A question of values would be, “Should the rich pay?”
Although, “the rich” is a misnomer. Solving the ongoing and never-ending problem of government deficits and debt has less to do with “the rich” — however that is defined — than with straightforward income levels. Never mind whether people are rich or not. Are people on the sunshine list rich? It’s subjective. It depends who you ask. Your opinion may depend on how far away you are from the sunshine list, i.e., if your days are usually overcast and you can never get a tan.
But let’s return to the premier and his poor facility with numbers, and lack of awareness that when you state a “fact” about numbers, you are also stating a value judgment.
Ball said a while ago that higher-income earners in the province cannot be expected to pay more to the government, because the top 35 per cent of earners already pay 88 per cent of the income taxes collected by the provincial government.
This is indeed an astounding figure. One-third of taxpayers contribute almost nine-tenths of income taxes. Surely it mocks and automatically defeats any and all “make the rich pay” arguments. They’re already paying for almost everything.
Or so the premier would have you believe. The oft-repeated adage of being wary of statistics is good advice, because Ball’s “fact” has a flip side.
The top 35 per cent of income earners undeniably pay a lot of income tax. But how much do they earn? Ball conveniently didn’t go into those details.
Budget 2016 estimates the province will pull in $1.42 billion in income taxes.
The 88 per cent that the 35 per centers will pay amounts to $1.25 billion.
The 12 per cent of total income tax that will be paid by the 65 per cent of lower-income earners amounts to $0.17 billion ($170 million).
The province has five income tax brackets. Using the top two (16.8 per cent and 15.8 per cent), we can use a missing variable equation to determine the total income of the top 35 per cent of taxpayers. That figure, give or take a few tens of millions, is $7.7 billion. That’s before federal taxes, of course.
Using the bottom three income tax brackets (8.2 per cent, 13.5 per cent and 14.55 per cent), we can likewise calculate the total income of the lower 65 per cent of taxpayers: $1.5 billion (before federal taxes).
To recap, there is $7.7 billion of income for the top one-third, and $1.5 billion for the bottom two-thirds.
The top one-third of taxpayers collectively earn five times as much as the bottom two-thirds.
It is strange the premier didn’t mention this.
Brian Jones is a copy editor at The Telegram. He can be reached at [email protected].
