The impact of Donald Trump on Canada has been, it’s fair to say, negative. Much of this has been overt: A few examples include a botched pandemic response that is lengthening an economically damaging border closure, never-ending trade retaliations against Canadian industry, and a dismantling of the United States’ refugee policy such that it now contravenes our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Institute's Program Director, Katrina Miller, was on yesterday's Danielle Smith Show to discuss the Institute's latest report, Multi-Millionaires and Fair Taxes: The Case for a Wealth Tax. The segment dives into the report and dispels myths about the Wealth Tax. Listen and share here.

Canada’s corporate bailouts need to cut out tax dodgers and profiteers, and show long-term commitments are attached to the money.

A new report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer shows that the personal income tax cut proposed by the Trudeau Liberals will cost more in terms of lost revenue than first thought, and will strongly favour high income earners and families.

In recent years, progressives and social democrats have begun to embrace a much bolder tax fairness agenda than was the case even five years ago. This is especially true in the United States where Democratic Presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both made the case for a significant tax on large holdings of wealth, the closure of personal tax loopholes for investment income such as stock options, and serious corporate tax reform. In the 2019 federal election, the NDP similarly called for a wealth tax, higher taxation of capital gains in the personal income tax system, and a higher corporate tax rate.

The Conservative platform put forward by Andrew Scheer delivers tax cuts for the relatively affluent, to be paid for by largely unspecified cuts to spending on social programs and public services. That is a poor deal for ordinary working families who get much more each year in program benefits like public health care and post-secondary education and child benefits and public pensions than they pay for in personal income taxes.

The competing personal income tax cuts proposed by the Liberal and Conservative parties in this federal election are almost identical in terms of goals and re-distributive impact, and neither advance a truly progressive agenda.

It is widely argued that the rise of extreme income and wealth inequality, combined with the stagnation of wages of the middle-class and working class, have helped fuel the rise of right-wing populism and racism around the world. Many in the political centre, and not just the left, have called for robust policy measures to help create more equal societies and to counter the perception – and reality – that the economic system is rigged against ordinary working people.

This blogpost originally appeared in the Globe and Mail. 

Partly fuelled by reports from conservative think-tanks such as the Fraser Institute, many Canadians believe that they are taxed far too heavily and that the tax “burden” has been rising over time. Recently published Statistics Canada data show, in fact, that most individual Canadians pay very low effective rates of personal income tax, and that the tax “burden” has been falling.

The federal government is widely expected to announce a new competitiveness strategy as part of its Fall Economic Statement. Corporate Canada has been lobbying hard for a new round of corporate-tax cuts in response to recent tax “reform” under President Donald Trump in the United States.