blog
Dear Clients,
MY RANT
Here are two articles that I found of interest for you. # 1 is something I find quite disturbing, the Harmonized Sales Tax. This tax will be mean more than $4,500.00 and that is just personally not including the cost of running my business. No wonder people are building up so much debt, by the time the government takes their share we end up with diddly squat to live off of. And some politicians think the credit card companies are charging too much at 18% a year?
Some quick figures, and these are very rough - your income is 85,000 - 30,000 income tax - 5000 property tax = 50,000 - 20,000 in mortgage payments - 3000 insurances - 6000 utilities and hook-ups - 3000 gas - 350 wk groceries =18,200. leaves you with 5,800. to do everything else with. OH, but then you have to pay 13% Sales Tax on the 30,000 you had to spend to live which is 3,900. so I guess you really only have 2,000 for all other expenses like daycare, meds, clothing, a beer a week, a movie a year 3 nights camping, forget Santa and the Easter Bunny. Birthdays are gone.
Then they have the nerve to give all our work away to a few executives who could only show a track record of sinking the company they worked for. If it was my company I trashed my reward would be lots of debt and no income. That makes many of us small business owners wonder what in the heck we are doing.
Are we just going to roll over on this one too? Where is the responsibility? Obama, ( in the second article ) is going to scare the right wing wickedly but someone has to bring back fair play into our "free" society before we all become tax slaves. Who is kidding who here? I think we already are.
RANT COMPLETE
Suzanne
Ontario budget '09
March 27, 2009
$57B Ontario deficit over 7 years
Dwight Duncan tables a budget that sets out to spend Ontario out of the recession. It brings in a record deficit and tax reforms to help battered businesses. But there is a stinger that is going to bite consumers in the pocketbook and carries the risk of a political backlash.
13% - GST and PST merge in 2010
New HST will hit gasoline, heating fuel, tobacco, gym memberships, haircuts, dry cleaning, newspapers, magazines, fast food, taxi fares, legal fees, real estate fees, labour on car repairs, golf green fees, all our insurances and a host of other goods and services not previously taxed by the province.
U.S. unveils finance regulations
Sweeping plans from Obama administration would expand federal authority over major institutions
March 27, 2009 Martin Crutsinger The Associated Press WASHINGTON
The Obama administration yesterday unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the financial system designed to impose greater regulation on major players such as hedge funds.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told legislators in Congress that the changes are needed to fix the flaws exposed by the current financial crisis, the worst to hit the country in seven decades.
The goal is to repair a system that has proven "too unstable and fragile,'' he said.
"Over the past 18 months, we have faced the most severe global financial crisis in generations,'' Geithner said in testimony to the House financial services committee. "To address this will require comprehensive reform. Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game.''
The administration's proposal, which will require congressional approval, would represent a major expansion of federal authority over the financial system. It would impose tougher standards on financial institutions judged to be so big that their failure would represent a risk to the entire system.
It also would extend federal regulations for the first time to all trading in financial derivatives, exotic financial instruments such as credit default swaps that were blamed for much of the damage in the meltdown.
The administration also wants larger hedge funds to be required to register with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In addition, the administration proposed the creation of a systemic risk regulator to monitor the biggest institutions. Geithner did not designate where such authority should reside, but the administration is expected to support awarding this power to the Federal Reserve.
The plan includes a measure that Geithner and Fed Chair Ben Bernanke discussed before the committee Tuesday to give the administration expanded powers to take over major nonbank financial institutions, such as insurance companies and hedge funds that were teetering on the brink of collapse.
That power was aimed at preventing a repeat of the problems surrounding insurance giant American International Group Inc., which sparked a furor last week when it was revealed the company had distributed $165 million US in bonuses to employees of its financial products group. The unit specialized in trading credit default swaps, the instruments that drove the company to near-collapse last fall.
"Let me be clear,'' Geithner told the committee. "The days when a major insurance company could bet the house on credit default swaps with no one watching and no credible backing to protect the company or taxpayers must end.''
The administration, pushing for quick action on its reform agenda, sent Congress a 61-page bill dealing with the expanded powers to seize control of nonbank institutions late Wednesday.
Democrat Barney Frank, who chairs the House committee, said the overhaul should ensure the U.S. government has more options and can avoid repeating the unattractive choices it faced last fall of letting Lehman Brothers fail, which sent a shock wave to the entire financial system, and propping up AIG with billions of dollars.
Republicans questioned whether the overhaul would give federal regulators too much power.
