Sure. Certainly I think other witnesses have elaborated upon income splitting.
In our view, income splitting has a number of problems attached to it. Filing a joint tax claim or, more to the point, transferring some of a higher-income earner's income symbolically for tax purposes to a low-income earner or a non-income earner is problematic in that it's a very expensive initiative. The research suggests that in fact the most significant benefits accrue to the highest income tax bracket. If you have two income earners earning about the same income, say you have one at $35,000 and the other earning about $50,000, the savings in terms of your tax return are somewhat negligible. It really is in the highest income tax bracket--we're looking at $80,000 plus--where you have one income earner earning a lot of money and another income earner earning almost nothing, where the most benefits accrue. So we think it's not a cost-effective measure in terms of who it actually reaches.
But more to the point, if you believe that women should have economic autonomy, then it's very counterintuitive to allow for income splitting, in part because you're shifting tax liability but you're not shifting resources. The research demonstrates in other countries where forms of income splitting take place that it's often women who get into a situation where they're found to be owing money on income they did not earn and income that was never transferred to them.
That, in our view, is incredibly problematic. In the event of marriage dissolution, marriage breakdown, separation, if you have an instance in which someone has filed a tax claim on behalf of both individuals through an income splitting arrangement, after marriage separation one person can be left with a very hefty tax bill.
Part of our concern is that it actually compromises women's economic autonomy; it doesn't enhance it. And if you're not shifting the resources, if you're not actually shifting the income into the pocket of the woman, who tends to be the lower-income earner, you are in fact creating vulnerabilities that I think only exacerbate women's economic insecurity.
Aside from that, in our view it is a very expensive measure. The parliamentary research bureau has estimated that it would cost about $5 billion a year. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has said that it might even cost more because it could actually change behaviour. As a consequence, we think that forfeited revenue could be better spent on measures that all women could benefit from.
Maybe another point to make here is that it benefits two-parent families. If you are a single parent, you will get no benefit from income splitting, and if you're two low-income earners or even middle-income earners in Canada, the amount of money you would save in terms of income splitting is very, very modest. It really is a tax measure by which the greatest benefit accrues to the highest income bracket, where you have one very high-income earner and one no-income earner or low-income earner. In our view it's not an equitable tax policy.
We recognize that it was done for pension income splitting last year. I think all of the committee has had the benefit of the analysis around the problems associated with pension income splitting. We understand it's a policy that can resonate with a lot of Canadians, but I think that when you look at the numbers and when you look at what you value in terms of women's economic autonomy, it doesn't make sense.