Madam Speaker, I want to begin by saying to the member that in no way, shape or form did I mean to cast aspersions on the people who are generating great personal wealth in this country. Neither did I want to say that they were not paying tax through illegal means.
The bottom line is that there are opportunities that exist for tax deductions or tax options within the tax act that would allow a person with great wealth to reduce that income tax payable.
I am not going to get into any specifics today, but I did give an example in a recent householder. I will give the one example that was actually advertised in a magazine a couple of months ago: "Now your income tax dollars can help you invest in a beautiful home in the sun". I am sure members remember that ad: "This investment opportunity is designed to be of maximum tax benefit to individuals like you with a total family income of over $50,000 per year, Intelevest Group. You can either redirect your income tax dollars to help you invest in luxurious townhouses in beautiful Sarasota or you can continue to send all that hard earned money to the government in income taxes".
In other words, this is an example of how the tax preferences discriminate against those with lower income tax. In other words, you would have to be over that amount. It allows a higher income earner to use his higher income to participate in this luxury townhouse rental income at an after tax cost of zero. That is one specific example but there are many others.