Skip to content

CPP, EI and medical are benefits - not taxes

Primer on federal benefits offered up by News reader

For the second year in a row, the B.C. Taxpayers Federation is spreading misinformation about payroll tax and MSP premiums.

MSP premiums are not a tax they are a user fee. Depending on your net income, you can have all or part of your MSP premiums subsidized.

The provincial government has nothing to do with CPP or EI premiums and only those who earn more than $50,000 a year pay the maximum CPP contributions.

You do not pay CPP premiums on the first $3,500 you earn each year, and you do not pay CPP when you are under 18 and over 70.

The more you contribute to your CPP, the more you get back later in life.

As for EI, hopefully you get some back in lean times. There was no EI or CPP during the Depression. In fact, their was no income tax until midway through the First World War.

Employment Insurance, then called Unemployment Insurance, commenced in 1941 as a result of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Andre Mollon

Langford