Finance committee  Yes, it does.

Finance committee  It does. When it's phasing in, it's reducing the marginal tax rate. When it's phasing out, it's increasing the marginal tax rate. When we design and enrich these programs, that's something we're always mindful of. That's one of the motivations for reducing the phase-out rate to 12%.

Finance committee  I think one of the interesting issues in comparing the earned income tax credit in the U.S. with the current working income tax benefit—which will become the Canada workers benefit—is that if you think of the delivery of child benefits in the U.S., a lot of it is done through the earned income tax credit.

Finance committee  It depends. You could think of it two ways. You could think of their total liability during the year. If I'm in one of those cases where I start to pay tax—I might owe this amount of tax and I received this amount of what will be the Canada workers benefit—it might be a net positive or net negative.

Finance committee  Sure.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  It's an interesting way to think about it. There are basically two things. What we've just been talking about is more of an average tax rate. In net, are you paying something or are you receiving something? Then, it's a question of what's your tax rate on the margin? When I'm in a given range for an additional $100,000 of earnings, what am I paying on that, either to increases in taxes, or reductions in income-tested benefits?

Finance committee  Just the idea of the supplementing it requires. It's phased in with earnings. That could be employment income or it could be self-employment income. The idea is to support low-income families in a way that's connected to work. That requires you to have a job. That's the encouragement.

Finance committee  Trevor talked about the expansion, that psychiatric service dogs will be included as an eligible expense. If you think of psychiatric service dogs in general, they can be tasked with, if people have severe anxiety, searching their homes before they enter. If someone is experiencing night terrors, applying compression can help improve the situation.

Finance committee  The medical expense tax credit is a non-refundable credit. It's for above-average medical expenses. It's the portion of eligible expenses that are about 3% of your net income for most people. Basically, it will be 15% of whatever those eligible expenses could be. It could be obtaining the animal.

Finance committee  I'm thinking of an unattached individual because it's going to phase out around $13,000. That's roughly around the same level because you have—

Finance committee  When the Canada workers benefit, building on the current working income tax benefit, is introduced in 2019, you can think of two main enrichments or improvements. One is the generosity of the benefit. It will become more generous in a couple of ways. First, the maximum benefit will be increased by about $170 for both singles and families; that's both single parents and couples.

Finance committee  That's a year. These are annual amounts.

Finance committee  Also, the Canada workers benefit, to use the new name, phases in with earnings, it's flat for a while, and then it phases out with your net income. The proposal is to start phasing it out a little later so people can earn a bit more income before it starts to phase out and then phasing it out at a more gradual rate, at 12% instead of the current 15%.

Finance committee  That's about 300,000 eligible low-income workers.