Finance committee  So if I just sit here in silence.... To be clear, I think the reference to the wealthy bankers' wives is kind of a historical one in terms of the policy debate around how we support families in this country. It's one that goes back to the mid-1990s, talking about how we had a sy

Finance committee  There are jurisdictions. I think one of the other witnesses named a few. I'll speak very briefly about two very short examples.

Finance committee  France has had family taxation; however, they also have a very different approach to taxation. They tax capital, they tax wealth, they pay families to have a parent stay at home for five years. They have female labour force participation that is 10% lower than here in Canada. In

Finance committee  The full-profit tax preparers will be brought into CRA's new compliance scheme, a new regulatory mechanism. I think the agency is doing the right thing in focusing on education. Monitoring the performance of those paid tax preparers and providing those additional kinds of remedia

Finance committee  That's based on research done by Tammy Schirle, who has found that for the families who are receiving the UCCB, it actually leads to a decline in the workforce participation of women in those families. I think there's some fuzziness about that particular program, frankly. Is it i

Finance committee  First of all, I'd like to say that I am pleased that child care is back in terms of public policy debate. I think that's an important step in the right direction. I think what concerns me is that if we try to overlay a universal flat fee system on top of the existing universal c

Finance committee  If you compare and contrast, for example, a family with two income earners, both making $40,000 for a combined family income of about $80,000, income splitting leads to about a $5,000 federal—federal alone—tax cut for them. This is my back-of-the-envelope calculation.

Finance committee  For the couple making $40,000— Sorry, for a one-income earner family—

Finance committee  They get nothing out of income splitting either because they're already both in the lowest tax bracket. But if you compare to one-income earners making $80,000, they would benefit.

Finance committee  Even within that target, you have to have sufficient taxable income for that earner to be able to drop a bracket or more.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Yes, because of the way that our progressive income tax system works.

Finance committee  I think perhaps I'll turn to Frances.

Finance committee  I think the short answer to that is probably nothing. If you don't have anyone to split your income with, then you get no benefit out of income splitting. I'm not exactly sure where the estimate of 14% of households might benefit comes from.