^ the vast majority of Canadian benefits/subsidies do not consider wealth. this is mostly due to lack of information and difficulty and cost in acquiring said information. ideally you would asset test all benefits but it would be incredibly costly to pin down asset levels for anyone. i believe they asset test for provincially funded welfare, that’s about it.
No, it’s purely income driven which is one of the reasons why I said I didn’t like this on my OP.
There are millionaire Chinese families buying up properties in Vancouver with corruption money (driving up the price for everyone making it unaffordable to live for everyone else) and yet they will qualify for these programs and get the max because their “income” is low.
Also, if you are on other subsidies, (ie. wellfare, free money for furniture, flights and etc that the new Syrian refugees received), you shouldn’t qualify for these benefits on top. The extent to which you can be a drain on the system needs to be capped.
to be fair, those millionaire chinese families must become permanent residents or citizens to receive the benefits, meaning they at least need to pay property tax (directly or indirectly) and potentially/likely pay taxes on investment income. it’s not like they just buy a property from china and receive child benefits. their situation is no different than a silver spooner canadian with no job.
the syrian refugee issue is another topic. i know nothing about what they receive in $ terms but i’m confident they aren’t receiving an obscene amount given their complete lack of assets and income earning potential. i would imagine this is an issue everywhere.
Being an immigrant myself… I know of plenty of people of HK / China that come over, buy an expensive homes and become PR. Dad stays over in Asia and mom stays in Canada and sends kids to school while collecting child subsidies. Property taxes and capital gains taxes are a moot point because I pay property taxes / capital gains taxes just like other people with high income that don’t qualify.
I agree that the refugees do not receive much (i believe around $25K / year for the first year) but if you factor in child subsidies at $6,000 per kid annually (many of them have large families of 4 kids or more), it would take them close to $50K a year that is essentially TAX FREE without lifting a finger. How does this motivate them to stop bringing kids into this world and go to work? In fact, It would give them incentive to have more kids and create an economy of scale to support the household.
Also, you look comparatively, many other families that immigrated over to Canada previously including refugees from other countries did not / do not receive this level of assistance.
As to your previous point about helping some middle income folks, I agree it helps some families and know of few myself that deserve such help due to unforeseen circumstances.
However, the program the way it is set up doesn’t address my concerns of: where is the money is really going to? do the families that truly deserve it receive it? and does the program benefit the society overall?
So far, the answers are ‘no’ to all three for me still. There are better ways if you want to help middle / single income families raise healthier and better educated kids such as tax credit on extracurricular activities, income splitting (which was taken away), food vouchers assigned to specific families (so that the vouchers can’t be traded for cash or something else).
wrt to the chinese couple, i would imagine it’s more complicated than you’re making it sound. you have to be a taxable canadian resident to qualify for benefits. i am no expert in this realm particularly because i have no knowledge of chinese/hk taxation but i’d imagine that the government would not pay the wife benefits if the husband’s income is not taxable in canada. they would basically have to lie to the cra and say they’re not married. canada can tax income earned outside of canada for all PRs. from a quick google search, cra determines benefit payments based on worldwide income so your example is outright false.
as for refugees, i’m unsure about how much they’re given upfront but it is a one time upfront assistance package. after that, they receive exactly what everyone else receives. so $50k a year is incorrect. they would get about $50k in the first year and then $30k in subsequent years just like everyone else and that’s for a large family. my feelings are conflicted on this topic as i think if you’re going to bring them over here you have to provide proper assistance but yeah, it’s a lot of money. i think that given the small number of refugees taken on, compared to many other western nations and given the fact that we’re known for this type of assistance globally, it is fine and i think it’s hard to argue with. i think of our refugee program spending as making up for our below average military spending.
to answer your questions. the majority of this program’s money goes to middle income families (as programs are already in place to support low income families). yes, middle income families have seen costs go up a lot over the past 20-30 years (schooling, daycare, etc), and their incomes have lagged, so they are the ones who deserve it the most. whether a program benefits a society or not is difficult to tell. if the goal is to reduce income inequality, then it is a good program for society. there are always pros and cons.
LOL… you give CRA way too much credit. You think CRA actually has the ability to find out how much the spouse makes overseas or even has the initiative to do so (remember that they are government employees)? I’m not a tax guru but I have some base level CPA tax education and had previous dealing with CRA on personal and corporate matters and most of them aren’t the brightest. Yes, these people lie on their tax return… because people lie for their benefit when they know they won’t get caught. CRA may have a policy stating that benefits are determined on worldwide income but it doesn’t work in practice. So… no… my example is NOT outright false.
With the refugees… read my post and I clearly say $25K for the FIRST YEAR, so it is $50K for the year isn’t ‘incorrect’… Whether Canada has a moral obligation to help these so called “refugees” (I would rather call many of them economic migrants) is a separate discussion but let me say that I do not envy the consequences that Germany and Sweden are receiving for taking in so many “refugees”. Maybe you know something that I do not know, but as far as I know the people coming over have a choice… we are not “bringing them over” by force and as such, we do not have to provide proper assistance to them or help out with their large families that they choose to have despite their economic circumstances.
Yes, the money goes to middle income families… but that’s a simplified answer and no, they don’t deserve it the most because costs have increased. Just because it goes to their families… doesn’t mean it goes towards better education for children and building a better society, which was I had questioned - ie. plenty of “middle income families” has the ability to buy luxury vehicles. It wasn’t too long ago I was making between $50K to $90K gross and got by fine in a lower tax bracket and had money to max out TFSA and put some into RRSP by living frugally. Given Canada’s progressive tax structure… this additional move toward “income equality” wasn’t necessary in my opinion and is likely a cons for society because it penalizes / dis-incentivizes people that work hard or put their own capital at risk to build a business.
if you lie to the cra about your income and they find out, you could owe hundreds of thousands in back taxes, penalties and interest, could face criminal charges if non-disclosure was intentional and you will have to pay back all benefits received. while the day-to-day operation of the cra is mediocre, have you ever faced a cra audit? who do you think they are auditing if not the new PRs with no income who live on a street for millionaires? this is an obvious audit candidate.
you said ‘50k a year’. it isn’t ‘50k a year’, it is 50k in the first year. we are “bringing refugees in”. if they have to get on a plane and fly here and we accept them at the airport, and give them residency, they should get support. you either accept refugees or you don’t. you don’t accept refugees and then go, “have fun living in poverty! please don’t suicide bomb me out of distress!”.
rising income inequality is a negative for society for a vast number of reasons. social cohesion and long-term viability of the society being numbers 1 and 2. i’m unsure how a family living in any major city in Canada can afford a new luxury car with a household income of $50k. a single dude, sure, a family, no. also, this is not an ‘additional’ move toward income equality, this is the first move in well over a decade as virtually all of harper’s policies saw the upper middle and upper classes get the bulk of the benefits.
Yes, Gov employees are idiots…sort of a universal truth.
I’m new to the area, but we have plenty of Korean connections here. They are sharp as hell, the system is stupid, and they outsmart it. Simple as that.
^ So you associate with criminals?
You do too, if you actually work in the finance industry. 
In all fairness I don’t think it takes smart Koreans to outsmart the CRA. anyway I think the CRA likes small fish, like me. A few years ago I had made a contribution to my TFSA and then subsequently stopped being a Canadian resident taxpayer in the same year. I got a letter from CRA threatening penalties despite the fact that the offending account had already been closed.
Last week a Canadian investment advisor tried to walk me thru all this TFSA-whatever business, maybe the coffee wasn’t working, but sounded like a complicated nightmare. Probably I should keep my money parked in New York! Between the income tax and the investment tax it’s amazing anyone has any money left…
I work in corporate, protecting my firm from the criminals.
TFSAs are pretty straightforward. What don’t you understand?
It wasn’t just TFSAs specifically, but all the rules of the game different in CA vs US…was a lot to absorb at once. Seems a lot more tax oriented here.
it is very simple. you must be a Canadian resident and citizen if you want to avoid CRA penalizing the crap out of your TFSA. TFSA is like a Roth except that when you change residency, you have to collapse your TFSA.
also, to further push my point about lying to the cra about your worldwide income, is it really worth the massive penalty and interest bill as well as a high probability of losing your PR status and not being allowed to enter the country. intentional tax fraud is a major crime and you can lose PR status for minor infractions. absolute best care scenario is that they take everything back plus interest and penalties during the estate process. the cra will not let your estate close without pinning your d!ck to the wall. again, they will catch you in 3-5 years as you live in a million dollar house and are receiving maximum transfer payments. they will look at your bank account and see huge transfers of money and will freeze your $hit immediately and take back what’s theirs and then some. i guess you could get around it by illegally embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash over time but then you’re on the hook for money laundering and many worse things. a toddler could uncover this type of fraud.
robbing corner stores probably has a better risk/return than this activity wherein you’re inevitably and easily caught.
You don’t need to necessarily close the account - the TFSA will be restricted to no trading in the account, no further contributions allowed and redemptions only.
In the case of permanent residents, can’t you just wire your saved income each month, into your country of citizenship broker account (if your home country has less cumbersome tax rules)? Maybe a person doesn’t want to become involved in any of this local crap.