Harper must be feeling the heat about cutting Arts Grants because now he's offering tax credits for parents whose kids are taking music or drama lessons. Typical Tory to fund the rocket and forget about the payload....
Tax breaks for piano lessons
- Thread starter lone wolf
- Start date
...except for who is it who routinely put their kids into music lessons and drama coaching? This proposal is just more tax breaks for the better-off at the expense of Canadian culture - and at more cost to taxpayers.
Who puts their kids in music lessons? Middle class families.
I'd be happy to get a tax break for my kids' piano lessons. To my mind, it's better use of taxpayers money than paying for Tal Bachman to tour - his father's got more money than I do. Why should we pay for his tour?
I'd be happy to get a tax break for my kids' piano lessons. To my mind, it's better use of taxpayers money than paying for Tal Bachman to tour - his father's got more money than I do. Why should we pay for his tour?
Middle class? What do you call that nowadays? The working poor - the ones whose lumber and fishing industry jobs are gone - have priorities - like housing, utilities and food. They're the ones Harper claimed to be helping last election.
My son is in drama wolf. And while we pay taxes through the nose, we're not anything above 'middle class'.
Good for him. It's great to see kids getting instruction in the arts ... and parents who can afford it. Your husband is also in the oil industry which pays well above minimum wage. On behalf of thousands who have lost jobs to Free Trade or mega-merger or offshore move or injury and now struggle through on jobs at Macdonalds or just get by on Disability, we salute you....
Wolf, this is the first year we've been able to put our kids in something like this. And it's drama partly because we can't afford sports. And it's one kid only for the same reason... cost. If it's been a bit beyond our reach (we who you so graciously salute), then why on earth would tax incentives to make it within the reach of people who used to have the means (before freetrade and mega-mergers and all), be a bad thing? Or mom working down at McD's? Tax incentives might help get kids into this stuff... that's not a bad thing IMO.
If you're scratching on your income, is a $500.00 rebate going to put lessons any closer to the grasp of a family whose combined income is less than 20 grand?
Yeah, it might. Or they might never put their kids in anything. But the family that was at 40 and not able to afford it might finally be able to. There are more than just the rich and the poor... there are a lot of shades of grey in between, and they have kids too.
Are you talking about the middle class, or the working poor? Pick one, and let us know. Try to be consistent. You're using both terms here. I wasn't talking about the working poor - there are programs available to make sports and arts available to people who can't afford to put their kids in it.
I don't like the class thing. That's a pigeon-holing tactic of "I-think-I'm-better-than-you" label-makers. Let's say working poor if you really need the tag.
I think we're lost here. I said that the people who take music lessons are middle class, you brought up the working poor, now you're telling me to use working poor if I need the tag. I don't have a clue what you're talking about, or why you brought it up.
You asked who sends their kids to music lessons, and I said the middle class - people with family incomes of about $40,000 to $120,000. Oddly enough, these are probably the same people who go to the ballet, or opera, or theatre performances, which seem to be the ones leading the charge on the whiny snivelly scale to complain that they aren't getting enough of a handout from Ottawa. I call bull****.
I suppose you will blame the conservatives for that, too, even though its always been like that...
