04/21/2024
There are days when I feel significant guilt that I have become dependent on having small businesses pay me, though also very grateful that many do because I have mouths to feed!
This article has led me toward a lot of reflection... perhaps some of you will find it interesting as well.
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/nova-scotia-remains-canadas-most-government-dominated-province
A wise woman pointed this out to me... To operate a small business, owners are usually FORCED to pay a bookkeeper, because they are not trained and don't have time to do it all, as they must follow many government rules to collect/remit all the taxes expected... HST, CPP, EI, Income Tax... maybe a Marketing Levy, and in the early years those small business owners are often working without even earning enough to get paid themselves... All the money they take in goes to pay their employees (often not even a living wage), pay for the things they are selling, etc. and THEN to remit all these taxes expected, including extra beyond the hourly rate they commit to paying the employee (extra for EI and CPP), often leaving nothing left as profit for the business owner to draw as a wage. They usually cannot increase their prices, because no one could afford their product if they did.
Now consider that small business owners are not even part of the 63% named in this article... They are like "unpaid government workers"... working very hard, often just so they can pay employees and then send money to the government, often living in poverty themselves.
Before we suggest the government needs to spend more, consider that the money to be spent would need to come from somewhere, likely impacting such small business owners even more.
At the rate things are going, it seems likely that soon we will not have any small businesses left!
Not sure how exactly we could simplify things for the small businesses, so they don't need to spend so much time and money on bookkeeping, but I am sure they need our support to improve things!
I look forward to retirement someday, so I won't need to collect from small business owners anymore.. but that doesn't really solve their problem now, does it? :(
At 63 per cent of the economy, Nova Scotia’s government footprint is far beyond the estimated optimal level.
