Madam Speaker, again it depends very much on the individual situation. Let us talk of two adults, a husband and a wife, who earn $20,000 between them. If they have no deductions, then they would pay 17% on $20,000 which would be $3,400. That would be their total tax but the effective rate for them would actually be 8.5%.
The beauty of this tax system is that for each incremental or marginal increase in one's income, the tax is linear. I am speaking as a mathematician. It does not go up exponentially as it does with the Liberal scheme where if we make more and more the Liberals take a higher and higher percentage of it. We propose to take a constant percentage. Therefore, it is a truly—and what is the opposite of a regressive tax system—a progressive tax system. Those people who make $20,000 would pay zero. As the income goes up, the total amount that is paid in taxation goes up in a really nice continual curve. It does not have big leaps.
We hear these horror stories about people who got a raise or overtime pay but had less on their paycheques than if they had not worked that extra time. They got into a higher bracket. That will never happen with our system because it is a linear system.
It was a very good question and I appreciated the opportunity to answer it.