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Imagine there are only 18 people in Canada. 17 of them emit less, and only pay $4 in #CarbonTax. One emits much more, and pays $32. Gov’t takes in $100 in revenue and pays out $90 in the form of a flat $5 rebate. The *average* taxpayer gets a 125% rebate. #math — Mick Malowany (@malowitzki) November 2, 2018

The 10% not returned is supposedly the cost of added bureaucracy to administer the program.

I got excited.

I thought, “Can we get this started right now before Ontario Premier Doug Ford messes it up?”

Ford has joined with several other premiers to fight Trudeau’s “revenue neutral” carbon tax.

But then along came that stick-in-the-mud Mark Towhey who replied to Mick and his #math.

Towhey wrote, “Your example is incomplete. Your 17 low emitters then pay around $2 each to the high emitter because the high emitter is a corporation that must pass its costs along to the consumer. So, each of the 17 pays $6. Plus HST = $6.78 – $5 rebate = $1.78 out of pocket.”

Towhey points out what is so often missing in these sorts of debates. Real math has to include both sides of the ledger.

The average Canadian may see a rebate on the credit side of the ledger, but must also calculate what they spent on the debit side before deciding whether or not they benefited.

No sensible person argues that a company hit with a new expense will not attempt to recover it by passing it along the cost to consumers. Increasing the cost of energy increases the cost of everything.

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And did you catch that part about tax on tax? Trudeau will charge tax on his carbon tax and is not planning on returning that to Canadians.

The Prince George Citizen writes, “The federal government’s impending national carbon price could bring in more than $250 million in GST revenues next year but Ottawa doesn’t intend to account for those funds in its rebate program.”