Finance Committee on April 25th, 2023

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Yes. I see smiles. Okay, we have a couple. There are no names. It's fine.

I know it would help our committee and it would probably help those of you who work very hard on these things over holidays and all the rest of it, so some greater discipline around budget dates would be welcomed, I think, by many. I'll leave it there.

I want to circle back on a couple of items. I think it was Mr. Leblanc who mentioned about something needing royal assent in order to perform. My understanding is that there is some precedent for it. As long as a ways and means motion is tabled in the House, CRA would administer tax changes based on that public tabling.

Is that fair?

[Pierre Leblanc]

Thanks for the question.

For most tax proposals it is, but here—with something like the grocery rebate or something paid out of the GST credit system—you're talking about refundable credits, so you're talking about amounts paid out of the consolidated revenue fund.

The CRA's position for those sorts of changes is that it will only do so when Parliament has passed the legislation and there is royal assent.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Okay, and there was all-party support to do that. There is a bill that I assume is going to make its way quickly to the Governor General's hand for signature.

Forgive me if this is not in the right section, but dental care was brought up, or at least the tax information-sharing on behalf of the taxpayer. If the benefit is not taxed, what is the purpose of having taxpayers disclose the dental benefit that they receive from an employer. Is there a...?

[Mark Maxson]

That particular piece is in part 4.

You might be able to get a better answer from them, but my understanding is that it's for the purpose of ensuring eligibility of the individual.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Okay. It wouldn't be because there are folks who think we should tax the dental benefits of Canadians in private plans, right?

[Mark Maxson]

There's no connection to that. It's for the purpose of Health Canada to see who has coverage. Again, it's a part 4 measure.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

I remember a lot of discussions on that issue previously, on budget 2016 or 2017. Lots of folks have been recommending that for some time.

On the provisions for the CRA and the electronic filing, do any of these have to support the automatic tax filing objectives of the government or is this solely on the basis of electronic filing? I'm just trying to understand. It will prefill people's tax returns. Are any of the sections in this BIA to support that objective or are these different?

[Lindsay Gwyer]

None of the measures would support that objective, as far as I'm aware.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Okay. That's fair.

My final question is very technical, so we could take this off-line if you'd prefer.

It relates to some of the excise tax changes with respect to digital assets and some clarification that non-resident mining pools that use a certain kind of technology or set-up would be not considered as sharing their payments. I know that there's an industry in Canada that has kind of set itself up and is wanting to make that sure it can avail itself of the input tax credits.

Can we get clarification on that? Could I follow up with a technical question, maybe, if that's not something we can clarify here today?

[Amanda Riddell, Director, Real Property and Financial Institutions, Sales Tax Division, Tax Policy Branch, Department of Finance]

Yes. I'm not sure if there's a question in there, but....

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Really, it's for those who use FPPS or PPS—I think you know what I'm talking about—as to whether they would be considered to be sharing their mining payment with a Canadian entity.

[Amanda Riddell]

I think that's probably an off-line conversation.

[Adam Chambers, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Okay. That's wonderful. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Thank you, Mr. Chambers.

I guess you can get to MP Chambers some of that information he's looking for.

Now, members, we have the Liberals for five minutes.

MP Dzerowicz, go ahead, please.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

I want to say good morning to all of my colleagues.

Also, thanks to all of you for all your hard work. There are definitely a lot of technical details. I really appreciate you being here this morning to answer our questions.

I have two big parts to me. One is a business side: I've been in business for 20 years. Then there's also the side of me that is a very big constituency person. One of the things worrying me this time is that there are many people in my riding who are caught in a cycle of poverty, and I worry about them a lot.

The first question I want to ask you is about the automatic tax filing.

My understanding is that right now we already provide that service to a number of Canadians, and I wouldn't mind if you could tell me how many Canadians actually already benefit from automatic tax filing. The second part is that budget 2023 is now going to increase that to allow 2.5 million Canadians, I believe, to get access to automatic tax filing by 2025.

If someone can answer those two questions, that would be great.

[Pierre Leblanc]

Sure. Thanks for the question. What I think I can do is provide some high-level information. There was an announcement in budget 2023. There's no measure in the bill related to that.

I think the CRA currently provides a number of services basically to facilitate tax filing, to support tax filing, for Canadians. One example is “Auto-fill my return”, where you can, through other tax software, download on your return basically all the information the CRA has. I think that was used about 14 million times in the last tax season. That would be an example.

Other examples include—

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Mr. Leblanc, I'm sorry. I'm going to stop you because I have very specific questions on the automatic tax returns. If it's not in parts 1 to 3 right now, I'm okay not to proceed. I have other questions that I can ask.

[Pierre Leblanc]

It's not in 1, 2, 3 or 4.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

That's fine.

Sorry about that. That's my bad.

I would like to turn to the Canada workers benefit because that also helps people who are on the lower end of the income scale.

For those who are listening, could you explain who the Canada workers benefit is available to? I believe what we are doing in budget 2023 is offering to advance payments of the Canada workers benefit.

Could you tell us what the impact of that will be on Canadians who are eligible for the benefit? Just remind us what the Canada workers benefit does, who is able to access it and what the impact will be on the advance payments.

[Mark Maxson]

Thank you for the question.

From a broad lens, it's available to most workers below a certain income threshold. If you are a single individual, unmarried, with no children, you could be making in most provinces up to $33,000, or have income of up to $33,000 I should say. If you're a couple or a single parent, for example—so a multi-person household—it's up to at least $43,000. That limit could be higher if you're a dual-earner couple. There is some variation in Quebec, Nunavut and Alberta, which have entered agreements to adjust the parameters.

The general story is that you're making at least $3,000 from work, and you're earning less than about $33,000 for a single individual and $43,000 for a family.

In terms of the advance payment proposal that was in the 2022 fall economic statement, it would essentially say that if you received the Canada workers benefit in a particular year—let's say 2022—based on your work and your income in 2022, we're going to automatically provide half of the amount of your entitlement as an advance payment during the subsequent year. That would be starting in July, and then October, and then January. If you're eligible for more when your tax return for the next year is assessed, you would get the remainder at that point.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

The reason we chose to do that is to provide advance dollars to those who might be needing the dollars the most during this time of high-cost living.

Is that right?

[Mark Maxson]

Yes. The purpose is to push it forward in time and get it to people sooner.

[Julie Dzerowicz, Liberal, Davenport, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Peter Fonseca]

Now it's over to MP Ste-Marie, please, for two and a half minutes.