I've added a small followup to this post here.

In a recent interview with NTV, while addressing the provincial budget deficit, Premier Dunderdale stated that

"16% of people in the province pay 70% of the taxes. We need to talk about that."

The premier seems to feel that most Newfoundlanders (i.e. the non-rich ones) do not pay their fair share of taxes. Perhaps she is setting the stage for a regressive tax hike or perhaps she feels that introducing the idea will make cutbacks more palatable and help her with labour negotiations.  In any case, her numbers are bogus and she needs to be called out on it.

I don't know where Dunderdale got her numbers (if anyone knows, please comment), but she is pretty clearly talking about income taxes only, not taxes in general.  According to the latest CRA data, the top 17% of income tax filers paid 67% of provincial income taxes in 2009.  Conflating "income taxes" with "taxes" (a common trick in right-wing American politics: lucky duckies, we are the 53 percent, the Romney video, etc.) is particularly egregious in the NL context where personal income taxes make up only about 13% of government revenue.
Most people pay more in sales tax than income tax, and many spend more on gas and tobacco taxes than income tax, so focussing exclusively on income tax is deeply misleading. Furthermore, top income tax rates were cut in 2010 meaning that even the share of income taxes paid by the rich is less than Dunderdale's figure (probably closer to 60% than 70%).

In the following chart, I've plotted my estimate of the share of income going provincial taxes as a function of total income of individuals. I've had to make a few assumptions that are explained at the end of this post.


But this is not the end of the story.  These taxes only account for about 30% of government revenue.  What about the rest?

The government receives about 17% in federal transfers and 7% from corporations.  I'm going to ignore these because I'm interested in taxes on people in Newfoundland.

The biggest revenue source is offshore royalties which account for about 35% of revenue. How one understands ownership of oil revenues is crucial to deciding who is carrying the tax burden in this province.  My position is that the natural resources of our province belong to the people of our province and that they belong to each of us equally.  A poor Newfoundlander has as much claim to our resources as a rich Newfoundlander.   If you'll grant that much, then it stands to reason that the offshore royalties belong to each of us equally, the poor as much as the rich.  Thus we should treat royalties as personal income that is equally distributed and taxed at 100%.

I treat in the same way the much smaller revenues from mining royalties, NLC revenues, lotteries, driver licenses and so on.  This works out to a per capita income of about $5800 a year, of which $5000 comes from oil.  Treating this as personal income that is taxed at 100% results in the following chart.

******* Note on Calculations *******

According to the Electoral Boundaries Act, section 15(1):  

Update:  The Sir Robert Bond Papers has written a response to this post here.

In 2007, the PC party of NL introduced a $1000 bonus for women who give birth or adopt a baby.  The Sir Robert Bond Papers blog has recently run a series of posts analyzing the effect of this policy on birth rates, concluding that the effect has been small and temporary.   There are a few problems with his analysis though, so I'd like to add to this discussion.

Firstly, his analysis considers only the number of births per year, which fails to account for changes in population and demographics.  A better indicator is the fertility rate: the average number of live births a woman can expect in her lifetime based on age-specific fertility rates in a given year.  Secondly, his analysis doesn't acknowledge that declining birth rates is a trend nation-wide and that provincial rates should be compared to what is happening in other provinces.

The following chart compares NL fertility rates to Canadian fertility rates.  The rates are per 1000 women so a rate of 2000 means that the average woman will have 2 births in her lifetime based on that years stats.
This shows that fertility in NL is consistently below national averages, but has jumped much closer in recent years.  The timing of that jump is easier to see by charting the difference in fertility rates by year.
The jump happened in 2008, the year after the new policy was enacted.  Moreover, the difference has actually narrowed since then.  Now I'm sure that the booming economy has a lot to do with this, but the data is entirely consistent with the PC baby bonus having a significant and enduring effect.

The following summary of tonight's St. John's Council meeting was written by Sherwin Flight.  

Here's a basic rundown of what happened today at City Hall.

- At the very beginning, Mayor O'Keefe had everyone in the room stand for a minute of silence for the victims of the recent school shooting in the U.S. He talked about how safety is such an important thing, something we all need to focus on, and how the world just wasn't what it used to be. (More on this later)

Data from Statistics Canada suggests that police in Newfoundland and Labrador are no longer charging people for simple possession of marijuana.   This contrasts with national data that show simple possession charges rising.

The following charts shows rates of marijuana charges per 100,000 population.  The blue line is charges for possession and the red line is charges for trafficking, production, or distribution.  Since most people charged with a more serious marijuana crime are probably also charged for possession, the gap between the lines gives a measure of charges for simple possession.

Rates of marijuana charges in Canada

Rates of marijuana charges in Newfoundland and Labrador

Since about 2003, charges for possession in NL have barely exceeded those for more serious violations, and fell slightly below in 2003 and 2004.   In contrast, the rates of possession charges in Canada have been growing steadily since 2005 while rates for more serious charges have held steady.  I suspect the fact that Stephen Harper became prime minister in 2006 has something to do with this.

via People's Assembly NL