Madam Speaker, it is important to point out the strong attention that our friends on the political left pay to redefining language away from the clearest possible wording.
As I said, members can call it a tax, a levy, or a deduction. Here are the facts: if there is a mandatory portion of a person's pay that the government is taking away from them, it does not have to be called a tax, but economically it behaves like a tax. Economically, it introduces a disincentive relative to the person's previous position. It means that compared to prior to the deduction, they are relatively worse off and relatively less likely to engage in that behaviour, because the amount they are taking home as a result of it is less.
That is the basic economic logic here. Again, it does not matter what the members call it, but the behaviour of it is exactly the same.