Stephen Harper has made another good policy announcement -- this time to remove capital gains taxes on securities donated to charity. This idea has long been pushed by people in the charities sector, and it has been proposed before. I even did so in my 2001 essay for the now-defunct Magna As Prime Minister Awards contest. The result would be a giant increase in charitable giving, as has been witnessed since the tax rate was slashed in half in 1997. (As I wrote in my essay, a report by Deloitte & Touche shows the average number of gifts of publicly listed securities increased 22 times from 1996 to 1999 and the average dollar value of the gifts increased 19 times.)
This announcement is being overshadowed, however, by the news that Harper would repeal the Liberals' recently-announced tax cuts. A Harper government would revert back to the higher rates for lower and middle income tax earners, while cutting the GST and others taxes. The end result is that everyone would pay less tax under a Tory regime, even with this small hike. However, the optics are not good. Not good at all. As Andrew Coyne observed, Harper should get the entire Tory platform out right away before this story spins out of control.
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 5:35 PM
