Of Course It Is A Rip-Off

Forget it, Jake! It's the government!:

The claim that we get more back than we pay in the carbon tax never passed the test of common sense, nor did it comply with available evidence, and now the Parliamentary Budget Office has proven it to be false.

The PBO released a report showing the majority of Canadian families will pay more in the carbon tax than they will get back in rebates within the next eight years.

“Household carbon costs will exceed the Climate Action Incentive payments households receive,” writes Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux. “Most households in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario will see a net loss resulting from federal carbon pricing. That is, the costs they face — including the federal carbon levy, higher GST and lower incomes — will exceed the Climate Action Incentive rebate they receive.”

Families in Alberta will get kicked the hardest, with the PBO estimating they will be $2,282 poorer for the year 2030, even after all of the rebates are handed out.

The PBO also finds that in eight years’ time, the federal government will rake in $837 million in the GST that’s applied on top of the carbon tax. That’s nearly a billion per year dumped into government coffers because of a tax-on-tax.

This means Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s claim that everyday working people will “get more back” in rebates than they pay in the carbon tax simply is not true. The claim is based on numbers that don’t add up and it ignores big chunks of the carbon tax cost, including the GST and job losses.

 

Basic math skills would have figured this out ages ago, but, you know, Canada, so ...