• zephyreks@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Tax breaks remove potential future tax revenue, but aren’t spending tax revenue acquired from another source.

      • xmunk
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        1 year ago

        Yea, there’s no significant difference - tax breaks spend revenue from a future source.

        • zephyreks@lemmy.ca
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          1 year ago

          But with a tax break in an emerging business, that revenue wouldn’t otherwise exist because the company wouldn’t have opened operations here when it could take advantage of egregious US subsidies instead.

          • xmunk
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            1 year ago

            You’re falling into something akin to the broken window fallacy. Economic resources aren’t created or destroyed by incentives, they are shifted. If that tax break didn’t exist those loans, employees, potential capital etc… would be doing something else. Tax breaks need to be extremely precisely honed to avoid lowering future income.

            • zephyreks@lemmy.ca
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              1 year ago

              Economic growth doesn’t happen on its own. The Canadian economy isn’t some entity that magically sees growth without investment.

                • Rocket@lemmy.ca
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                  1 year ago

                  Did you accidentally read “does” instead of “doesn’t”? Supply and demand being intrinsically linked is why economic growth does not happen on its own. If there was some way to separate them, then economic growth could theoretically happen on its own, but as that notion lives with fairytales and unicorns…

    • Rocket@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      It can make a big difference in who can use them. An income tax break, for example, is only useful to those who have income to tax. While a subsidy can fund a venture that does not yet have income.

      • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        I meant in this context where it’s established companies that have the means to build the factories they’re planning to build.