Wealth concentration increased in Canada between 1999 and 2023. In Ontario, the top 0.01 per cent of families had an average of $546 million in wealth, while the bottom half of the population averaged just $137,000, according to a new report from Canadians for Tax Fairness. https://www.taxfairness.ca/en/civicrm/mailing/view?id=1112&reset=1 Even a small tax on the wealth of the richest would produce tens of billions of badly needed revenue for priorities like healthcare, education and non-profit and co-op housing.
“Extreme wealth concentration poses a significant danger to democracy and social cohesion — especially at the scale we are experiencing it in Canada,” the report notes. It is not just unjust, as the report states, especially at a time when poverty, housing and food insecurity are at record levels. Vast concentrations of wealth allow the super rich to buy political influence in many ways, from donations to candidates and slush fund to funding large pro-market think tanks that shape public opinion and discourage an ideas that a more egalitarian society is possible.
The report proposes several ways to tax wealth, along with prohibiting tax havens that shield the wealth of the very rich. A wealth tax in Ontario, at 1 per cent on wealth above $10 million (which equals $100,000) rising to 3 per cent on wealth above $100 million, could bring in about $18 billion in new revenue for the province. The report adds that predictions that the wealthy might flee a jurisdiction with a wealth tax have proven to be highly exaggerated; it just isn’t that easy to uproot a family and corporation. There are countries that, like Canada, are places where the wealthy can live without fear of violence to themselves or their children or their employees and they have wealth taxes. Many of the wealthier countries have inheritance taxes, which Canada doesn’t have either, that limit inherited privilege to some extent. Dozens of countries have higher personal income taxes, World Population Review data shows.