My name is Elizabeth Brown. I am the director of Single Seniors for Tax Fairness.
In our 2024 budget submission, we discussed the unfair taxation of single seniors and the inability for a single senior to transfer RRSP and RRIF assets to a beneficiary of choice without significant taxation.
Marital status is one of the prohibited grounds for discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act. We show that single seniors pay proportionately more in income tax than couples with the same combined total income. On $50,000, for example, a single senior will pay five and a half times the taxes of a couple. At other levels of income, they are more likely to exceed the thresholds for the clawbacks of benefits, such as old age security.
One of our supporters was surprised to see her taxes double when her spouse died. Others say the big-ticket items, such as mortgages, rent, property taxes, home and automobile repairs and gas, cost them the same as those of couples.
Please implement recommendation 115 from the finance committee's report, “Responding to the Challenges of our Time”, and please implement the recommendations from our current 2024 submission.
Please leave alone the benefits that couples receive and focus on greater equality for single seniors. Show us that Canada's 2.8 million single seniors matter to you.
Thank you.