Thank you, Chair.
My name is Amanda Riddell. I am the director of the real property and financial institutions section in the sales tax division of Finance Canada. I will briefly describe some of the measures in parts 3 and 4 of the bill, just to give you a flavour of the sales tax measures that are in there.
Part 3 includes amendments to the Excise Tax Act, and Part 4 includes amendments to the Excise Act, 2001. The amendments in parts 3 and 4 are technical amendments that affect limited stakeholders in very particular situations.
I would note that the Department of Finance also consults publicly on most amendments before including them in the bill. To give an example of a technical amendment, part 3 includes an excise tax measure that clarifies who is eligible to claim a rebate of excise tax for goods purchased by provinces for their own use.
There are also a few simplification measures in parts 3 and 4 to ease tax compliance for businesses. For example, part 3 includes a measure that would raise the income threshold above which financial institutions would be required to file a special information return. This measure is intended to simplify the compliance for smaller financial institutions.
Finally, there are a few relieving amendments in parts 3 and 4 of the bill. For example, the bill would expand the GST/HST exemption for certain health care services to include professional services rendered by a psychotherapist and counselling therapist. It would extend the 100% GST rebate in respect of new purpose-built rental housing to certain co-operative housing corporations.
This concludes a brief description of the type of measures included in parts 3 and 4 of the bill. There are a number of officials here who specialize in each of the areas affected by these measures who will be able to explain in more detail if you have any questions.
Thank you.