OTTAWA, April 8, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A feature in the April 12 edition of Maclean’s Magazine reveals that if a mom decides to stay at home to raise her children, Revenue Canada will be penalizing her at tax time. Canada’s tax law grants child care deductions to parents only if both are working. Financial planner Peter Merrick told Maclean’s that the law is really “a penalty.”“The government doesn’t do anything to promote families,” Merrick told Mclean’s. “This has always been something that bothers me.” Merrick’s wife stays at home to take care of their three children.
“There are major flaws that are systemic—it frustrates me as a financial planner,” Merrick said. “I can’t put a price on having one parent stay home. But the tax system makes it a disadvantage to have children.”“Our tax system,” Niels Veldhuis told Mclean’s, “is clearly biased toward dual-income families and against single-income families.” Veldhuis is an economist with the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute.
Read the Mclean’s feature at: http://www.macleans.ca/topstories/finance/article.jsp?content=20040412_78769_78769
Read a previous LifeSiteNews.com Special Report on this issue. In 1999, then Reform Party MP Monte Solberg (Medicine Hat) asked the Liberal government, “Why is this government discriminating against single income families? Why is a family making $50,000 paying $4,000 more in taxes than a dual income family?” See the full report at: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/1999/mar/990304a.html