…when going to Canada to escape the taxes was like going to Scotland for the cuisine.

Well, the American people had Hope, and boy, did we get Change:

In a clear indication that Canada is starting to be considered a low-tax place to do business, Tim Hortons Inc. announced yesterday plans to shift its base of operations from Delaware to Canada for tax purposes.

Further, analysts indicate this is also a sign of unease among corporations regarding the U. S. business environment, where taxes are likely heading upward to deal with trillion-dollar deficits and proposed health-care reforms and the White House is looking to crack down on companies that invest abroad.

Remember when Democrats used to whinge that the GOP was “exporting jobs?”

Of course, Cap ‘n Enslave won’t so much “export” them as put them out on the curb to be hauled off, but I digress:

In Canada, the federal corporate tax rate is headed to 15% in 2012, and the federal Conservative government has called on the provinces to get to a 10% business levy by the same time frame–for a combined 25% rate on corporate income. Alberta is already at 10%. British Columbia will be there in 2011, Ontario by 2013, and New Brunswick will go down further, to 8%, in 2012.

In the United States, the top corporate tax rate is in the mid-30% range. As a result, the United States now has about the highest combined corporate tax rate, second only to Japan, among industrialized countries.

“This is an indication that Tim Hortons has looked at the structure, and they think Canada has a competitive tax system … but I think it is forecasting into the future that Canada is likely to stay that way,” said Len Farber, senior tax advisor at law firm Ogilvy Renault and former top-ranking official at the Department of Finance.

Hm.  Maybe that’s why all those celebrities who promised to move to Canada back in 2004 didn’t actually do it; they realized that the US was going to become everything that Canada was, and vice versa.

(Via KB)

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 7:03 am and is filed under Socialism American Style. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.