Thanks for the question.
Certainly, progressivity is an important feature of any income tax system, and the more you switch away from income taxes towards other types of taxes, such as on consumption, the more you end up with less progressivity in the system rather than more. Something that we push for is more progressivity in a tax system.
That being said, you can address progressivity by switching more to income taxes, but you can also address it often by closing tax loopholes, of which there are plenty.
Unfortunately, this budget introduces another one, which is for teachers and which in some degree I'm in favour of, because my wife is a teacher. That being said, we've traded closing some tax loopholes for opening other tax loopholes. I think broadly speaking a much cleaner, progressive income tax system is going to be much easier to meet in terms of a lower bill.
The other thing I would point to are these questions. What are we doing with the taxes? What are we spending that money on? Are we spending it on something that we benefit from?
If such is the case, I think it's well worth increasing taxes to pay for programs that we can all benefit from or that certain portions of the population can benefit disproportionately from. It's very dangerous to disconnect taxation from what the money is being spent on.
Thank you.