This month, in my province of Ontario, a tax credit cheque called the Ontario Sales Tax credit comes out. This is one of the tax credit cheques that only low income families get (and yes I realize how other countries don't give the same credits and I think that totally sucks for the low income people in those countries).
I belong to several "mommy" groups on facebook. Each month that one of these credit cheques come out, someone usually asks what day they are to be expected, or something to that effect. And each month, there's various women (usually several of them on each thread) who start whining about not getting the cheque. Going on and on about how they could use the extra money too and it's not fair that some people get them and some don't.
So looked it up on my government website.... In order to receive this particular credit, a family like mine (2 adults, 2 kids) must make less than $50,000. Seriously? I know one normally doesn't advertise online what their income is but - that's more than DOUBLE what my family's income was last year! So we'll use the estimated income of - family A made 25k last year, family B made 50k. Family A qualifies for various tax credits from the government. Family B is deemed to have "made too much money". So lets see how fair this works out....
Family A makes $25,000 every year.
gets GST (Government Sales Tax) - $774 per year
gets OST (Ontario Sales Tax) - $1060 per year
gets Child Tax Credit - $8616 per year
gets Universal Child Care Benefit - $1200 per year
Total Income - $36,650
Family B makes $50,000 every year.
gets Child Tax Credit - $2436 per year
gets Universal Child Care Benefit - $1200 per year per child under 6 (in this case we'll stick to the same as my family, 1 child under 6)
Total income - $53,636
Difference - almost $17,000
As you see, Family B still gets *some* tax credits from the government (the UCCB being the exact same amount as long as you make less than 160k a year, the rest of the credits are all on a sliding scale, the less you make, the more you receive)
Now I completely get that Family B works and makes a higher living due to education or whatever, but really? I'm perfectly happy at my income level. I don't wish for more money all the time, I happily make do with what we have. We don't get all the fancy new toys that come out every 10 minutes, but we have much more than we need. I'm not at all complaining about someone making more money than me. What I'm complaining about is the people who DO make more money than me, bitching that they want more! I propose (since they're so in NEED of my tax credits) that they give me the 25k that they make more than me and I've give them my tax credits.
