Cowtown

My comment wasnt to do with tax. It was more the "dont allow" part of your spouse not working. I'm not even going to go into the the "get a mistress" part!

JamesK

That's interesting. We were rather assuming that we would both need to work. I would ask what the break even figure is, but I guess

a) That's personal, and
b) It's probably radically different for an ordinary employee like me

Cheers,
James.

dbd

I'm not sure of the break even point but :

- as an employee she can earn about $25,000 without paying tax (some juggling of charity and medical deductions involved)

- if she works that's $25,000 which goes from zero tax in her pocket to 40% (or whatever the higher rate is) in mine, that's $10,000 she has to earn for us to reach zero

- in order for her to make the $10,000 net she'll have to gross $15,000 or thereabouts

- childcare runs, at least, $6,000/yr (there's a deduction but that's getting complicated) suppose that's $10,000 before tax.

So far, we're at $25,000 to be earned for no gain and that's without cost of travel, cost of clothes and so on. And this is a purely economic calculation, one might think that a mother at home has value beyond strict economics.

Posidrive

When I first arrived I was a little concerned about taxes, but after seeing it all in action there is not really a lot of difference. On a six figure salary I seem to essentially get to keep the same percentage here that I did in the UK.

If you come to Alberta then sales tax is much less (7%) since there is no PST, although when shopping it does become an irritation that the prices that you see never inlude the tax. You do however have to pay this tax on things such as new houses and second hand cars which is a bit of an irritation.

I find that property tax is the one real nasty. On a square footage basis it's probably on a par with the UK, but much larger houses appear to be the norm. So if you are living in an area appropriate for your demographic you will probably pay around twice as much property tax as you would have paid council tax.

In general though, all the taxes are out in the open hre. You don't don't get stung by lying b!@#ards taxing you through the back door. And at least you seem to get something done that benefits the majority with your tax money here.

But at the end of the day tax should not be the deciding issue. People come to Canada for the quality of life and what it offers. Apart from the bums, you don't see people living on the street just because they have had to pay a bit more tax. You may pay a bit more tax, but you'll probably live and enjoy life longer.

dbd

Very suburban is it, where you are ?

Posidrive

We are going to build a house in Cochrane. Property taxes will be over 4k per year plus bareland condo fees which will cover snow removal, street lighting, etc. All in all about 7k per year. Ouch!!!! Back in the UK we are paying about 2.6k (Cdn) for council tax. The new house will however be over twice the size of our hutch in the UK.

If it all goes to plan????? I'm bouncing around my office like a stressed pin ball at the moment, wondering if our house sale has fallen through the day before we were expecting to exchange contracts (very strange conversation with our purchaser earlier today). Thankfully there is a bar on the ground floor

Atlantic Xpat

And thats the truth of it. I cant imagine deciding whether to emmigrate to country or not on the basis of its taxation scheme!

BTW, I'm annoyed about my property taxes too.....they're going up to $1800 next year! (Mind you I do have to clear my own snow and am not on town water or sewer.)

iaink

Not exactly a typical figure though.

Good luck with the sale. Got my fingers crossed for you.

andy_sheila

Make no mistake, we are having a much better life here than we were in the UK, and we are 100% happier.
I am still English though, still proud to be, and always will be. It seems that some people on here like to paint a rosier picture than what it really is like, they also like to run down the UK because they think it's big and/or clever.
Continuously boasting about how much you have, how much you earn, how big your toys are etc etc is neither clever nor does it impress anyone.

Anyone who is truly happy doesn't need to boast about what they have.

Posidrive

Proabably correct about not being typical. This is based upon the percentage figures quoted by the developer. The property tax for our development is lower than the rest of Cochrane because we do our own snow clearing, etc, etc which is why we make up for it with high bare land condo fees.

But, perhaps I am missing something. As an example we were told that the property tax for the Cochrane area is generally around 1% of markket value. But before we decided to build we had a look at some existing properties in the area. The details sheets would always show properties taxes around the 3k level for properties even up to 600k sale price. What am I missing? or do the owners just lie about the value?

Thanks for the good luck wishes.

iaink

Perhaps they have had different experiences to you. We arent all the same after all.

All we can do is try and describe how it is in our own experience and perhaps try and empathise based on what we know its been like for others. No one persons views are right or wrong here.

iaink

In Ontario taxes are determined by a % of the "assesed value" which is determined by MPAC here. I believe there is a similar organisation out there.

This is not necessarliy the true market value. What seems to happen here is that increases in assesment are pretty modest to avoid a lot of appeals and protests, so assesed values lag real values. However, when you buy at the market value that becomes the new assesed value of your home, rather than the lower value that the previous owners had, so yes, your taxes will probably go up from whatever the previous owner says they were paying.

finallygotout

For some reason, you thought she was talking about you?

finallygotout

Couldn't agree with you more, I seem to be seeing a lot of that on here. What I really like about here, is taht no one cares what you wear, and am just as happy to go to wal-mart, or zellers to buy things.

iaink

No, but I see no point in dismissing the views and experiences of others simply because it doesn't match your own world view. No one here can claim to have a comprehensive black and white definitive view of what emigrating / living in Canada or the UK is all about. I guess my point was simply who's to say if its "a rosier view than it realy is", its just a different view based on different experiences.