The income tax reduction proposed in Bill C-4 will benefit about 22 million Canadians. The amount by which they'll benefit will depend on two things. First, it will depend on their taxable income, because it goes up to a taxable income of about $57,400 in 2025. Second, it will depend on the amount of their non-refundable credits, because most non-refundable credits are calculated at the same rate as the lowest personal income tax rate.
How the legislation works—that's before you work—is that as the bottom tax rate is reduced from 15% to 14%, so too is the non-refundable rate. While it is true that the value of those non-refundable tax credits will be reduced for the very large majority of people claiming the disability tax credit who pay tax, the benefit of reducing the bottom tax rate will be greater than the impact of reducing non-refundable tax credits, including the disability tax credit. Again, if they're paying tax, in the large majority of cases they will receive a tax reduction if the legislation goes forward.
What I could add is that in very rare cases.... Again, there are two factors at play. One is how much less tax they are paying on taxable income up to $57,375 in 2025, and the other is the reduction in their non-refundable credits. In very rare cases, what we see is that there are individuals whose total non-refundable tax credits calculated at the lowest rate are greater than the top of the first bracket threshold. There are some disability tax credit claimants in that group, but there are others as well. There are different reasons you can claim those really large amounts of non-refundable credits. Basically, in those cases, it flips, and the loss in value of the non-refundable tax credits is greater than the benefit from paying less tax on taxable income.
To get more closely to your question, that's basically a function of how big the tax rate reduction is. The bigger the tax rate reduction for that extremely small group, the greater the negative impact will be in those cases.
As you noted, when the minister was before you a couple of weeks ago, he emphasized that the government is talking with and listening very closely to stakeholders representing persons with disabilities and is committed to a resolution.
I just wanted to underscore that.