Canada to apply GST/HST to short-term rentals booked online
thinkpol.ca
thinkpol.ca
Seems like this isn’t a new tax from out of nowhere to disadvantage Airbnb but rather a policy designed to bring Airbnb in line with their peers.
It reads like Airbnb was put at an artificial advantage as compared to hotels because hotels had to charge sales tax. Now everyone does. Seems fair to me. What seems unfair is that they weren’t subject to this the whole time. Honestly surprised it’s not retroactive.
That makes up most of the "disruption" lately. Companies discover that they can exploit some legal loophole by claiming "but technology" and get an upper hand over classic competitors.
By the time they're forced to follow the same rules, or (less likely) the law is relaxed for everyone else, they already have a healthy head start and can either claim that they're being treated unfairly, or that they're better than everyone else.
Amazon: we don't need to own retail stores or inventory
Airbnb: we don't need to own hotel properties and employ managers and housekeepers
Uber: we don't need to own cars and employ drivers
Are there any examples of tech disruptors that are really displacing classic competitors only on the basis of tax loopholes?
Hotels also have higher requirements than an AirBnB host but the company says "we're just the tech platform". Just look at conflict resolution and what kind of leverage and protections a client has when dealing with a hotel vs. dealing with a private renter to see the massive gap that comes attached to that "disruption".
Because that's the thing, you could have short-term renting in the past but that wasn't an alternative to hotels. AirBnB made it a hotel alternative so that's the benchmark. Same with Uber, you could (legally) hitchhike in the past but Uber made the service a taxi alternative.
Imagine Google "disrupting" the state/national/federal identity registry, as in become the equivalent of the passport or identity card issuer while offering Google-style support and SLAs. Some services are important enough to be regulated, this is what today's disruptors are bypassing.
The solution to an industry being crap isn't to allow someone to bypass existing regulation, it's to create a set of effective regulations that can be applied equally to everyone.
The original loophole that Uber used was San Francisco’s different regulations between taxis and limo companies: The latter are less regulated but are allowed to accept prebooking, and not street hails. Uber realized that ordering a ride via a phone app is more convenient than trying to hail a passing taxi in many cases and can be served by a limo company instead.
- Drivers need a different, more expensive license or attestation that needs to be renewed periodically;
- Car needs a more expensive commercial insurance that covers all passengers and cargo, to a much higher payout, not just the driver like most Uber drivers have;
- Car needs to be inspected far more often to ensure it's roadworthy and can stand that driving regime for the future;
- Prices are regulated because the taxi service is seen as closer to public transport than to personal one. So you don't see price fluctuations more than you'd see for the bus;
- They need an authorization to serve an area (meaning they were checked according to local regulation);
- The company is responsible for its employees in many ways;
- And more.
A restaurant's kitchen has higher requirements than your private one which makes owning and operating a commercial kitchen far more resource intensive than a private one. There's no "kitchen sharing" where you can sell food straight from your private kitchen, "infirmary sharing" where you can pretend you're a doctor or a hospital room, or "legal office sharing" where you can pretend to be a lawyer without meeting all the requirements imposed on those sectors.
This is the loophole Uber exploited. Replace "car" with "house/room" and you get AirBnB. When they had enough of a head start they started complying with some regulation, while still acting like they're a different kind of service for what other regulation is concerned. They want to live on the border and pick and choose what applies to them, something no other commercial service is allowed to do. Except all the other disruptors who raise enough money to afford some fines while they still operate in a grey area. Cost of doing business.
(Past tense b/c I don’t live there anymore and am not up-to-date with current developments)
They certainly have used the loophole you describe extensively, but that started later, once they were sure there were no repurcussions for the limo dodge.
I definitely remember someone trying the kitchen one. Forgetting the name of that startup now, but it's been tried.
And given how badly America treats health care and law, I suspect the other two are in stealth mode right now.
They'll try something, squeeze as much money as they can from wherever they can, see if "the cost of doing business" is low enough that they can even pursue the shady business model as a standard operating procedure, or else at least survive and grow until they can go semi-legit. They will rely on the fact that authorities have inertia so it takes time until someone catches up to their shenanigans, investigates them, comes with a decision, then they can fight for a while, delay the inevitable until they they're cornered, restructure their operations a bit, and the chase starts again. Companies like Uber are still shady businesses that in many countries operated outside the law for more time than they operated within its boundaries. But they gave deep pockets and where there's money, there's a way.
Not that much different from organized crime businesses that start off as being one stop shops for anything regardless of law and regulation, and may eventually be spun out into semi-legitimate businesses with more or less above board practices.
CloudKitchens is the one Kalanick started, there are probably others.
Kalanick's recruiters reached out to me about CloudKitchens and I straight up said that no, I do not want to work for that guy.
Uber for a long time did exactly that. Saying "we're just a tech company" is like ThePirateBay, YouTube, or The Silk Road saying "we just store and transfer blobs of unidentified data between completely anonymous users". You are responsible for what happens on your platform especially if you are encouraging people to break the law by giving them tools explicitly for this and paying them. They could have easily asked "upload evidence of x, y, z which allows you to provide the service in this particular geofenced region".
Let's be real, most of it is getting a taxi medallion (sure you need a different driving license but any 18 years old can get it).
Posted it in an other thread [0] but do we really want to go back to the medallion system? Pre-Uber, either the driver rented the car to a middleman who rented the medallion from a rich owner, or said owner was selling and financing (most banks won't touch these medallions!) a medallion at a ridiculous interest rate to a driver that planned to use it as his retirement savings (an extremely volatile asset and not very liquid). The more I spoke to cab drivers the more it seemed their industry was a pyramid scheme aimed at helping established rent-seeker take advantage of often poor new immigrants. Uber brought a breeze of fresh air: Someone could simply buy a car, calculate the depreciation and it's value on the market (since unlike medallions cars are relatively liquid assets!) do rideshare and calculate their profits or loss. They can get out of the game at anytime, and they know exactly how much they are going to get for the car they have should they sell it.
Also, the argument on Uber/Lyft drivers not being contractors since they can't set their own rates and decide which ride they take strikes me as weird since medallion drivers were contractors, had to charge the price set by the city and could only pick-up customers in the (arbitrary) zones covered by their medallions.
And I'm not even touching the usual pain points and often discriminatory practices of medallion drivers (refusing card payments, refusing rides to non-white passengers and to non-white neighborhoods...).
The regulations created an artificial scarcity for transportation that increased prices, and lowered quality of service to the point where people were BEGGING for a service like Uber to come along
The solution to this problem is not "make Uber follow the tax regulations" which seems to be what you are suggesting
Robbery is illegal even if you steal from a criminal, or if people are BEGGING for someone to do it. Sure, when it's a social movement it's still breaking the law but has a different moral value. As it stands the value now is in Uber's pockets.
> The solution to this problem is not "make Uber follow the tax regulations" which seems to be what you are suggesting
No. Not only did I literally start my comment with <I never said (or meant only) "tax loopholes">, I also ended it with:
> > The solution to an industry being crap isn't to allow someone to bypass existing regulation, it's to create a set of effective regulations that can be applied equally to everyone.
I'm trying to assume good faith but replying to me while completely ignoring the content of my comment or twisting my words to imply the exact opposite of what I said is disrespectful and disqualifies your opinion in my eyes at least. Pretty sure also in the letter and spirit of HN's guidelines. Makes it seem like you don't want to be part of a conversation but rather throw your personal ideas out there everything else be damned.
With Uber, sure an individial driver can decline a ride based on the destination and assumptions he makes about the passenger, but it's far more likely that someone will take the ride, since there are many more drivers. They also have less to fear with Uber since they don't carry cash or deal with cash payments, and there's some level of trackability/identifiability of the passenger in comparison to picking up a random person on a street hail.
No, I never claim the greater good, that is what people that support government and regulations claim.
We need all these laws, regulations, taxation, etc "for the greater good"
Anyone that claims to be doing something for the greater good chances are is evil.
>>Robbery is illegal even if you steal from a criminal, or if people are BEGGING for someone to do it.
Some how I bet you would not agree in all situation, income taxation as an example...
That said, I do not place much stock in an argument "well that's illegal", as an Individualist libertarian I assess things based on the ethical foundation of liberty or the principle of self ownership..
So I base my support or rejection of a public policy, law, or regulation based on that ethical foundation. I do not outsource my thinking to a legislature.
>>I'm trying to assume good faith but replying to me while completely ignoring the content of my comment or twisting my words to imply the exact opposite
I was not "completely ignoring" your content, it seemed to me then, and continues to be my belief now based on this further comment that you desire increased regulations on Uber to make them fall inline with existing regulations, to "close the loop hole" as it were
This is in stark contrast to my belief that the regulations are the problem and adding regulations to uber is not the solution to the problem
Eliminating regulations on everyone is the solution.
Is the classification as an employee, with attached benefits, artificial scarcity in a negative sense? If so, we got quite a few industries that would also love to remove this "artificial scarcity" and allow the use of day labourers.
Employment classification was not what I was referring to, I am talking about the endless regulations around taxi medallion system that puts a government regulated cap on the number of taxi's
I would love to see your source on that, most cities with any kind of taxi system have some permitting or medallion system that limits the number of taxis
>>and have tried to, introduce day labourers.
Do you view this as a negative? because I do not
It's an assumption because the medallion system is very US-centric. Permits/taxi drivers license, if that's what you mean, isn't much more than a minimum qualification requirement and not a hard limit.
> Do you view this as a negative? because I do not
Yes? Because that's a ~100 year regression in most developed nations and I empathize with the people on the receiving end of that kind of hat-in-hand relationship. To not see this as a negative suggests to me a worryingly low empathy with the less fortunate and perhaps even nostalgia to a strict class-society, because that's the end result of a race-to-the-bottom unfettered capitalism.
That people are incapable of looking at a situation and making a choice for themselves if the situation is good for them or not? They must always be protected by the government "for the greater good", and that government regulation is inherently good and noble?
Really?
because after the state of CA passed a law prohibiting independent contracting for a whole host of jobs, many lost 100% of their income, many others lost flexibility in the jobs and other adverse consequences from moving from Independent contracting to employee
Many people PREFER to be independent as it affords them flexibility and well independence they could not get if they were employee's
it is foolish and ignorant to claim that I have "low empathy with the less fortunate" simply because I prefer less authoritarian government, less regulation and more personal freedom (and responsibility)
Yes, especially when the primary USP is just to lower labour costs compared to having them as employees.
> That people are incapable of looking at a situation and making a choice for themselves if the situation is good for them or not? They must always be protected by the government "for the greater good", and that government regulation is inherently good and noble?
Yes. People in a shite economic position and without any support from a welfare state are rarely in a position to refuse an exploitative relationship.
And yes again, the government is most likely far more "good and noble" than an employer in day labourer relationship - whose primary motive is not one's well-being but profit.
> because after the state of CA passed a law prohibiting independent contracting for a whole host of jobs, many lost 100% of their income, many others lost flexibility in the jobs and other adverse consequences from moving from Independent contracting to employee
A lot of people would lose their job in the insurance industry if universal health care was adopted. But it's still the right thing to do. Furthermore, the only reason why you can use that argument "Ah, it's horrible! They're losing their income!" is because there's no welfare state to help them out in between jobs and/or (re-)education.
> Many people PREFER to be independent as it affords them flexibility and well independence they could not get if they were employee's
Maybe some, sure. Not sure why that's relevant or mutually exclusive to not regress to day labourers.
> it is foolish and ignorant to claim that I have "low empathy with the less fortunate" simply because I prefer less authoritarian government, less regulation and more personal freedom (and responsibility)
A hand-in-hat existence has absolutely nothing to do with freedom, if anything it's its opposite. Freedom for capital, or market freedom etc, does not automatically translate to freedom in its literal sense to the willing or unwilling participants.
The boss is usually the most authoritarian relationship that most people experience from day to day, worsening the less fortunate one are. This would only increase the intensity of that.
No it really is not. but I also do not want to diverge in a debate over healthcare policy and how government run healthcare is not the Utopia people like you make it out to be, nor how many of the advancement in care the world enjoys is funded by the US Health system (which is one of the reason the US health system is so expensive) and if the US does go to be Government Run Single Payer we will see a HUGE decline is health care advancement worldwide
>>A hand-in-hat existence has absolutely nothing to do with freedom, if anything it's its opposite.
This is factually incorrect and ignorant of how these economic regulation actually impact the poor. Most of the time it causes business to fold, and the bottom rungs of the economic ladder to be removed, limiting options and forcing an ever increasing number of people in to poverty and into the welfare state. Which is then use ironically to justify more regulation which causes yet more people in the poverty and the welfare state, this cycle repeats over and over, and over again
Government regulations have NEVER lifted anyone out of poverty, free market capitalism does not, and only free market capitalism
If the US pulled out of the European Theatre and stopped "world policing" like many in the EU (and the US) would like, then it would not be long before most of the EU was speaking Mandarin or Russian, and the EU can not stand alone with out the US backing both Militarily and Economically
the "western-European nations." you wish me to compare the US to would fall in about 3 seconds with out US backing, and their Large State Welfare systems would collapse
Fyi because this is a common misunderstanding: Hotel chains like Marriott, Hilton, Four Seasons, etc also do not own most of their physical properties[1]. They are primarily management companies instead of owning a portfolio of real estate. If you see a Hilton logo on the side of a building, it doesn't mean that Hilton actually owns it. The logo is there because they have a long-term contract to manage the hotel for the real owners of that property.
>Amazon: we don't need to own retail stores or inventory
Amazon isn't a totally "virtual" company. Amazon owns (or leases) physical distribution centers instead of retail stores. They've always paid sales taxes based on nexus of those DCs. What's recently changed (circa 2017?) was collecting sales taxes on behalf of 3rd-party marketplace sellers.
[1] https://www.quora.com/Do-hotel-chains-like-Hilton-Mandarin-o...
This is correct for AirBnb, but incorrect for the value chain. Someone must have the flat on their balance sheet. Someone must have a cleaner lady on a payroll. Is Airbnb value chain more effective that hotel value chain? Maybe. Maybe not. But for AirBnb host having a tax advantage of not being charged as a tourism business while in fact being one was clearly an advantage.
Similar laws have been passed all over the world, including the US where it goes by a city or a state, Las Vegas being notable.
AirBnB: We don't need to pay sales tax or look after our hosts
Uber: We don't need to pay sales tax or look after our drivers
The sales tax problem is only a loophole in some territories. The "look after" part is a problem in all of them.
As a driver I like to have a platform to list my own services an independent way at instead of applying for a job at a transportation company. And as a passenger I like to be able to hire an individual driver. I don't want a taxi company nor the Uber company, just a private individual + a convenience website where I can find one.
As a traveler I don't want a fancy hotel, let alone a shitty one - I prefer a decent room or a bed in an ordinary private home.
If only Uber and AirBnB were just doing their job connecting individuals rather than trying to conquer the markets for themselves I would certainly be on their side.
I think that's a generally minority position though. For the most part, people prefer their own room, bathroom, and possibly kitchenette/sitting space. Along with flexibility about checking in and out. Not always of course. Sometimes you need to adapt if you're off the beaten path. But I'm pretty sure that if you surveyed most people, especially business travelers, they're not really looking for a speare room or bed in a private home.
But I believe there is enough no-hotel people to consider this an option worth existing.
Same thing with transportation: a significant portion (if not the majority) of people would prefer to be serviced/employed by a serious company yet many drivers prefer to freelance and many customers prefer real people over corporations.
In fact I myself mostly use classic taxis and hotels but I understand the value of being able to choose the other model.
Whatever opinion you have about that, it doesn’t seem to be addressing any sort of loophole. It’s not a new tax, it’s just a new regulation for collecting it.
According to Wikipedia [0] they only had to collect sales tax in all states since 2017 after some "Amazon laws" were introduced? That sounds later than I expected.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair,_Inc.
That is not how it worked (or works), in the US Sales tax is owed by the consumer, just like income tax. Amazon nor any other retailer "owes" the tax, they collect it on your (the customers) behalf and submits it to the state. In fact most states pay the retailer to do this as they get to keep a small part of the collected tax.
Before some TERRIBLE court rulings in 2017, Sales tax was required to collective if your business had a "legal nexus" in the state which generally meant you had a physical location in the state you were required to collect sales tax on the sales you made to consumers of that state, so even "cross state" shipments had to be taxed if you say had a office in that state but your warehouse with the goods was in another state
If the sales tax was not collected by the retailer, you the consumer were suppose to pay the tax yourself, most states have a self reporting question on your states income tax return form.
Many people did not do this, so the states started passing laws attempting to "close this loop hole" aka the Constitutional Power grated to the federal government to regulate interstate commerce
Sadly the Federal Courts are TERRIBLE at applying the commerce clause of the US Constitution in its plainly written meaning, as they allow the federal government to use it regulate completely intrastate commerce (which should be unconstitutional) and now (as of 2017) allow the states to regulate interstate sales which also should be unconstitutional by allowing states for retailers that have no Nexus in their state to collect sales tax on sales to consumers in the state
This is also why Amazon, Walmart and others are pushing for Congress to come up with a Interstate Sales tax regulation to override the patch work for some 3000 taxing jurisdictions that make up the US sales tax regulations
Executive fixing application of laws that haven't been applied correctly in the past however is an entirely different story. If laws oblige you to pay taxes you are obliged to pay wether they have been collected or not. Not much different from a crime being a crime wether you are caught or not. Unless of course there's also a law that states an equivalent of "taxes not collected within the first $n $timeunit are waived".
Either the Host does, or the Consumer of the service does, AirBnb would just be collecting and remiting that on behalf of the parties
It’s an interesting thought exercise, and fairness would in my sole opinion be based on whether they knew they should have been paying the whole time and were getting away with it. It won’t happen, though.
Tax law is what's written in statutes, but it's also how the courts interpret the law. This means there's stuff that's clearly lawful, stuff that's clearly unlawful, and then a grey area where reasonable people can interpret the law in different ways and we need the courts to rule.
This works well when you have cases that go to court. But some tax authorities prefer a light-touch or right-touch regulatory approach, and so they prefer to persuade people to pay tax that's owed and they leave court cases for the blatant offenders. That means we don't get the case law.
What's being explicitly applied is the federal and provincial sales tax.
Airbnb and the hosts were selling a service without collecting the sales tax.
Someone was tax evading, and someone owes the CRA back taxes.
So Airbnb's income on that transaction is £12.50, not £100.
Hosts do sell their properties on multiple platforms, and their income determines whether they have to register for VAT. In Canada it's apparently $30,000 per quarter, in the UK it's about £85,000 per year. So lots of Airbnb hosts don't currently have to pay VAT.
I was almost evicted since my landlord wanted to make more money with Airbnb. Before that I've already heard of cases how in tourists towns the local poorer population wasn't able to get long term apartments because richer tourists filled them through Airbnb.
Airbnb is cancer for the local population in any country that isn't very rich because locals & students then have to commute from further distances.
So banning Airbnb would be godsend for the local population of many countries, if you want to make money with renting open a hotel.
Obviously there is the argument "I own the apartment so I can do whatever I want". I really have no good counter argument for this as it is true. But all laws are really relative to the culture. This same person could then say "I don't owe the country any taxes because _I_ made the money".
So this just goes to show that we "normalize" everything based on laws.
For the greater good of the local population in poorer countries Airbnb should be banned.
If you think of it as Society vs Landlord, there are many reasons that Society can give to justify preventing the Landlord from Airbnbing. Such as, society has a duty to provide housing to locals, airbnb guests make residential areas more dangerous, dirtier and noisier, other standard reasons why businesses are not permitted in residential areas.
If these reasons trump the positive impact on the region from encouraging tourism, then, regulating airbnb makes sense.
The people in responses saying owners "should" be able to do anything with stuff they own - well, the owners of property certainly think so. What about the majority of the population? I expect people's opinions about this will change rapidly, in a radical left direction, when the COVID eviction and foreclosure wave hits the US.
It was really mind blowing- I had never really thought about how abstract the notion of property ownership actually is, especially when you factor in inheritance. We should definitely be more critical of political systems that seek to justify concentrating property in the hands of the few.
No thank you, sir. I was born in a country, where that was the case.
This system has failed in my country and in many others like mine. Let us hope we never try this again.
But there are other issues with this like the massive, inescapable trend towards centralization of ownership under capitalism.
So there is an argument to be made that it helps with jobs, higher pay, and retail establishments in the area as well.
I mean, zoning is a thing, right?
And yes, there are lots of serial property owners who run lots of homes on Airbnb but I really don't think regulation can be nuanced enough, at least what's been proposed.
Quite simply, yes. If this were all it was, nobody would have a problem. The issue is short-term rentals taking over reliable lease stock. Landlords can make more money with less downside renting out one weekend a month than an entire month, so why wouldn't they? So rental properties simply vanish from the market at key price points.
If everyone had a home that they owned, I would not have a problem with airbnb. But this is not the case, and we have no intention of making this the case, so as long as we have obligatory renters, we can't have this incentive.
Like in theory, all things being equal, long term rentals should be much better for the landlord. You don't have to worry about vaccines in the downtime, you dont have to clean/etc between tenants, you have less regulatory concerns (in theory), long term tenants have incentive to be respectful to neighbours and not destroy the place.
But there is just more demand for short term. Personally i would rather there was just more housing in general (maybe that's naive).
There are definitely some nice things about staying in an airbnb other than costs - having a full kitchen, having a bit more "room" [especially if travelling in a group], usually being in an area near things like grocery stores and less near generic tourism BS.
to build houses there is a need for a underlying infrastructure (roads, electric grids, gaz pipes, whatever...). Who's going to pay for all that when often existing ones are barely maintained?
Now cities could have more skyscrappers to house more people as well... but there is a lot of NIMBY involved as well, it's a complex subject.
I'm not opposed to Airbnb as long as they are subject to the exact same standards and laws as hotels, in dedicated buildings for instance. Obviously, very little hosts would want that.
Airbnb'ing an appartement can drastically affect the quality of life for neighbors as well.
City taxes may make up a portion, but if you break down where the money goes, it usually is schools, and emergency responders, not per se utilities, easements or roads.
For a new development, the developers pay for it, either by actually installing the infrastructure themselves or by paying "connection fees" to the utilities to establish the service. For a truly "greenfield" development they also build the roads, which may stay private or be turned over to public ownership.
Ongoing, the gas/water/electric customers pay for maintenance as part of the cost of the service.
Where I live, the only utility persistently moaning about cost of maintenance and infrastructure is the water/sewer service, which is run by the city. Gas and electric are private utilities and they seem to just deal with it.
Taxpayers! That is what a government is for after all.
To be clear, i think airbnbs should be subject to appropriate taxes in order to pay their share of that sort of thing.
I'm also not sure why this would be such an issue with airbnb relative to normal long term rentals. Its not like an airbnb uses roads & electric grids differently than a normal tenant.
> I'm not opposed to Airbnb as long as they are subject to the exact same standards and laws as hotels
Why not the same standard as BnB's or traditional short term rentals of small dwellings? Its not like hotels have ever had a monopoly on short term rentals to tourists.
Seriously. What is better about you, other than that it is you?
"Long-term is better for the community" may be an argument that I can get behind re: a tax, but that's not worth very much at all. Maybe a couple hundred a month in a good location? Less in a poor one.
They do own the fuckin apartment. They should be able to do whatever they want with it, within reason. Go pound dirt may be right.
I live in a condo building where there is a HOA rule where leases of less than 12 months are forbidden. I'd never live in a building where AirBnBs were allowed. Similarly cities can ban or severely regulate short term leases if they want.
And it's not just countries that might have a hint of socialist nuance: even the USA wouldn't accept if you buy a ranch and then declare that on this property only the laws of the PRC apply (or that you declare it part of the UK). There are limits to what ownership allows you to do and those limits are very much subject to legislation.
Here are more official sources on the news:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/economic-update-child-care-...
https://www.thestar.com/business/2020/11/30/ottawa-to-impose...
I suspect Airbnb instead made the request to placate underwater hosts during the start of the COVID tourism crash - they had to be seen as doing something.
Still an incredibly scuzzy and tone-deaf ask, but put in context, I sort of get why they did it.
I wouldn't resent a cultural development fee. It helps maintain a virtual wall across the southern border to protect our delicate assets.
I mean, it's one of the most lucrative business on earth. If Canadian content producers want people to watch their content they should just... make things that people want to watch? Worked fine for pretty much evert major studio out there.
Does an owner-operated web site count as a "digital platform"? What about a centralised telephone booking service?
Or does it just mean "anything that's big enough to be targeted as one entity by government"?
It seems clumsy to tax the booking method rather than the supply itself, but maybe it's a matter of practicality for tax collectors.
So Airbnb already charge for their service, and they're taxed on it.
What's new is taking GST (or VAT) on the accommodation too, which is normally paid over to hosts direct, and who have to remit VAT only if they were over the "small trader" threshold (in the UK that is not many).
When bureaucrats are searching for ways to make money, and they always all, for god's sake why don't they go to the obvious places first?
We also have to consider how much our subsidized postal systems are really just subsidizing one form of business over another.
Because some of their friends also benefit from these loopholes, though at a smaller scale I imagine. The whole "stupidity/malice" addage has always been a euphemism for "corruption" in my book. There is an insane amount of potentially taxable money and a lot of states dearly need that money, especially right now.
> We also have to consider how much our subsidized postal systems are really just subsidizing one form of business over another.
Yeah, but you could say that for roads as well, or any utility none of these businesses helped create and from which they profit. That's why taxation exists at first place. Imagine Amazon having to build/maintain their own roads to deliver parcels...
I'm a bit more lenient with Amazon from an ethical perspective. Airbnb, Uber and co, deliberatly violating local laws with their illegal taxis/hotels on the other hand, and the shear inability for governments to crackdown on these services... not because founders are geniuses, because VC money helps exploit justice systems. I can assure you that if I were to launch a bootstrapped Airbnb like service in my home country I'd be shut down in a week and probably jailed...
No, roads are socialized, not subsidized.
We socialize them because it would be impossible otherwise - each road represents a kind of 'single access point'.
Package delivery - other than possibly ensuring packages are delivered to remote areas - does not need to be socialized, and probably not subsidized.
Farming - again, absolutely not socialized, because it would be absurd for our governments to be running all of our farms - but - there are strategic subsidies because 'on the whole' we want to make sure certain crop availability (and for other reasons).
We subsidize entertainment: want to make a movie in Canada? You get tax breaks.
There's no reason at all to allow for skimping out on VAT for most online services.
And FYO with respect to 'looking for tax loopholes' - don't discount the ineffectiveness of the bureaucracy. We are 10 months into a pandemic, and the PM of Canada, just 2 days ago, the PM of Canada was zooming with a Big Tech CEO about some cool ideas for 'Apps with Contact Tracing' and other things that they have absolutely made 0 progress on. Compared to places like Taiwan and S. Korea and their very active operational engagement of COVID, sometimes I wonder how the mail actually does get delivered.
Canada post is not exactly subsidized: https://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/business/canada-post-group-rep...
But even if it was, this is precisely the type of thing it makes sense to subsidize, since its a business that enables other businesses.
2) "its a business that enables other businesses"
Almost all businesses 'enable other businesses' - this is absolutely not a reason to subsidize package delivery.
In fact, it's the opposite of a reason.
If there is a reason, it's to ensure some kind of common mail delivery particularly to remote outposts.
[1] https://lfpress.com/opinion/columnists/canada-post-back-to-a....
To be clear, Canada's total debt that built up since the 1980s is ~$750 billion. In 2020 alone the deficit of an equivalent of 20-30 years of government debt.
Who is to pay for all this spending? Well it's simple. We can look to our largest industries. Mining/Oil/Gas is actively being harmed and can't even afford themselves. Manufacturing was destroyed by christia freeland. Government taxes destroyed bombardier which is now being sold off. Little to airbus, little to alstom.
So we know exactly who is left in Canada to pay the bills. FIRE. Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate.
Finance are the ones who get to handle and manage the debt. So let's be realistic, Insurance and real estate left. Oh right, record low interest rates, possibly going negative. Real estate is being propped up by the government trying to prevent explosion.
I guess Insurance will be the one holding the entire debt?
"Today [2018], per-capita Canadian federal debt is equal to US$13,588.51. In the U.S., the same figure is nearly five times higher at $67,000 per American."
Source, the not-very-left-wing National Post: https://nationalpost.com/news/the-utterly-unbelievable-scale...