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Canada’s minister of finance wants to tax business savings. He wants to clamp down on people setting up companies in order not to pay tax. He says that his proposed tax changes, the most radical in 50 years, are all about “fairness.” As a former minister of national revenue, I fully agree that fairness is fundamental. The problem is that the changes he’s proposing simply aren’t fair.

Imagine two individuals, both earning $80,000 per year. One has a comfortable salary with four-weeks’ vacation. He has a generous pension and he knows he’ll get a raise next year. The other had to invest $250,000 of her own money to start a business. She needed to pledge her personal assets, her house and her car as collateral for an operating loan. She has five employees whose livelihoods depend on her, and if nobody wants her services next month, she doesn’t earn a cent.

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Who would begrudge a business owner the ability to invest her profits and earn a decent return after paying corporate income taxes, especially when her savings may be needed to sustain her business through a dry spell? After all, she’ll be taxed at the same personal rate as everyone else when she withdraws the money from her business.