Finance committee  Mr. Chairman, thank you, and thanks to the committee for inviting comment on Canada's place in a competitive world. I'm delighted to be back in front of the committee and delighted to see some familiar faces, and some new ones as well. I am very happy to be here. Canada's compet

Finance committee  It's intriguing in that way. No, Alberta does not need the revenue. It would benefit, but to what extent the province would benefit would depend on what else happened in other fiscal envelopes.

Finance committee  Absolutely. First of all, you wouldn't be exposed to capital gains tax unless there was a disposition or a deemed disposition, so you would be talking about the proceeds of a disposition rather than the business asset or the property itself. You would also need a one-time pop in

Finance committee  Mr. Chairman, yes. Absolutely.

Finance committee  Thank you. Those are ideal questions. On GST room, the benefit to the consumer would depend on the province you are in and how much of the available room a province chooses to take up. If you're in Ontario, with a relatively rich tax base, you might find that the province will

Finance committee  It could, in principle, but there are several “ifs” and “buts” attached to that. First of all, notice that I did say a provincial VAT, or value-added tax, but I did not say a provincial GST, because one of the alternatives to contemplate here is that a province would not have t

Finance committee  I would tend to agree. As a first and upfront caveat, Canada has a smarter system of taxing capital gains than the U.S. does. We have a fairly clean and simple model, relative to the complex multi-rate U.S. system that has a number of classes, a number of holding periods. So I

Finance committee  On tax relief, the first thing to point out is that it's not just an expenditure. It has a payback to federal revenue, and I would say--

Finance committee  All other things being equal, lower tax rates probably will tend to lower government revenue. It depends on what the tax is, however, on what activity it is attached to, and on what particular form of tax relief is on offer. Some tax cuts are more likely to stimulate investment

Finance committee  Capital taxes are first on the hit list for economists, simply because they are a penalty on marginal investment in the economy. Of all the forms of tax that are available to a government, it is the one that is most likely to impinge on investments and therefore limit downstream

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to the committee for inviting me back. It is always a pleasure to be here. Today's topic is a fraught one, so it is important, as always, to mention that although I am working in my capacity as research director of the C.D. Howe Institute, I am sp

Finance committee  I wouldn't want to answer on behalf of the department, but I think it's fairly reasonable to assume that some folks on staff understand how RRSPs work. Now, the key point to make is that this committee has been repeatedly told that various estimates have not taken into account

Finance committee  With respect to the taxation of income trusts, very little specifically. There was a change in the thin cap rules later on that would have been helpful if they were extended to trusts and partnerships, as the committee recommended, but there was nothing directly on that score.

Finance committee  The simple point is that in taxable accounts the dividend tax credit mechanism, as it exists, achieves good integration between corporate and personal taxes. It is imperfectly achieved within the tax-exempts, where common shares are not entitled to the gross-up and tax credit mec

Finance committee  Merci, monsieur. Merci, monsieur le président. The simple answer is that the REIT is a little bit different in the sense that it's a passive investment vehicle. It simply did not come into existence in the same way as the modern business trust, or energy trust for that matte