Finance committee  It's not meeting the goals that you stated when you set out this children's fitness tax credit. I have indicated there are better ways to do it; instead you are simply rewarding behaviour that already occurs. You're not increasing enrolment in sport. Instead you're taxing familie

Finance committee  Yes, that's correct. The refundability just brings us down a little bit through the income spectrum, but it doesn't overcome the fact that the majority of the benefits still accrue to high-income households, and the households claiming the maximum amount of that tax credit are al

Finance committee  A number of different mechanisms could have been used instead. One of the calls has been to eliminate all tariffs and excise taxes on sports equipment, and while you've certainly made some movement in that area, a lot of tariffs remain. By eliminating these tariffs you're reducin

Finance committee  Again the stated goal of the fitness tax credit is to increase enrolment of children in sport. It has not done that.

Finance committee  We have studies—and they're all referred to in my briefing note that you can review—four of which have shown that it has influenced a minority of households. The majority, more than 85% of them, are getting the tax credit for behaviour that would have occurred otherwise. So it's

Finance committee  Yes, all of these studies, while they're looking specifically at one or the other, indicate that because these boutique tax credits are all designed in the same manner, any of the results from one tax credit or another seems to apply more broadly. There have been studies that ha

Finance committee  The studies I am aware of that have looked at all taxes combined have all shown that the system is marginally progressive, though leaning toward flat.

Finance committee  Some of the measures in this particular bill are leaning toward rectifying tax treatment of loopholes that are exploited by wealthy individuals, so I wouldn't say that everything in this act then pushes up toward a flat-tax system, but we have, in fact, designed a tax system over

Finance committee  The $500 is the maximum amount of expenses they can claim, and that translates into a $75 tax credit.

Finance committee  When they raise it to $1,000, the maximum tax credit becomes $150.

Finance committee  That is correct. More than half of the households claiming it have household incomes of $100,000 or more.

Finance committee  That study has been superceded by a 2013 study that was published in the Canadian Tax Journal. It is based on tax filer data and is far more accurate than the data that was put together by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. The 2013 data is far more accurate because it's base

Finance committee  That's a really good question. It certainly isn't based on principles of economic tax policy design and implementation.

Finance committee  There are certainly two approaches you can have to this. If you want broad-based tax relief, it would be through the statutory tax rate system: let's reduce taxes. If you want to target low-income households specifically, the better way to do it is through regular, targeted payme

Finance committee  Tax fairness? Yes.