Hey Flaherty, how about a budget that includes the other 85% of seniors you left out of your earlier income splitting scheme?

In keeping with the lie, conceal, fabricate nature of Finance Minister, his much ballyhooed income splitting for seniors announced at the time Flaherty also reversed his promise to never tax income trusts and never raid seniors nest eggs, he embarked on an equally fraudulent scheme known as income splitting for seniors. The fact that it leaves out 85% of seniors is totally lost on the journalistic community and therefore the public at large.

In this regard the press is acting as accomplices to an inherently dishonest Finance Minister, and love to praise hin for his (misguided) decisiveness.

Here was an e-mail that was written by Yves Fortin, a retired senior member of the Department if Finance, from the days when the department had integrity. If anything Yves assumption about 30% of Canadians having defined benefit pension plans is an exaggeration. Recent studies indicate the number is 25%.


Subject: Re: Income Splitting for Seniors: Who actually benefits?
Sent: Monday, March 19, 2007 9:22 AM

Brent,

How many will actually benefit from Flaherty's discriminatory pension income splitting scheme?

1. Of the 30% of seniors who receive a pension I would say may as many as one quarter are widows/widowers, single, divorced, separated. That brings down the number of eligible seniors to 22.5%.
2. Of the 22.5% who are eligible as many as 25% may have spouses who have significant income of their own and who may be in a tax bracket not too different from the spouse receiving the eligible pension income. In their case there will be little or no tax reduction resulting from pension income splitting. We are down to 16.7% of seniors receiving a pension.
3. Many ot the remaining seniors receiving a pension but who had low paying jobs are in the lowest tax brackets and pension income splitting with a spouse/partner receiving OAS will not mean very much if anything.
4. All factors taken into consideration pension income splitting may not be of any useful benefit to more than maybe 12-14% of seniors.
5. Of those the ones who will benefit the most are seniors with fat pensions and stay at home spouses/partners. A retired federal judge or a retired deputy minister with a pension of over $100,000. with a stay at home spouse with no significant income will benefit handsomely. They will even be able to reduce or eliminate the clawback of OAS.
Question: What will be the real cost of this discriminatory scheme be for the government. ANSWER: Most likely a fraction of the big numbers Flaherty will announce in his budget.

Yves Fortin