Ontario’s Green Energy “Fee”: The Trouble with Taxation through Regulation

Canadian provincial governments have broad authority to impose direct taxes by passing enabling legislation in their respective legislatures. Governments may also use regulation to set fees, for example, to recover the cost of services they provide, but cannot use regulation to impose taxes that raise general revenue. Doing so would be unconstitutional. Governments nonetheless sometimes attempt to raise revenue by imposing levies that are deliberately mislabelled as “fees” – past efforts to do so have exposed provincial governments to successful constitutional challenges. This e-brief examines problematic example: the Ontario government recently ordered the Ontario Energy Board to impose a “fee” to be used to fund activities of the Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure; this fee is quite likely an unconstitutional tax.Governance and Public Institutions, Ontario Energy Board, Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO), taxation, regulation, unconstitutional tax

Policy Preference Change and Appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada

Canadian prime ministers appoint judges to the Supreme Court of Canada at their own discretion. This practice has been criticized as providing prime ministers with the ability to appoint judges whose policy preferences are regarded as politically congenial. We examine the Court\u27s judgments in the post-Charter era to discern the apparent policy preferences of the judges. Our results suggest that the policy preferences of judges are not strongly associated with the political party of the prime minister and that their policy preferences shift over time in seemingly unpredictable ways. We discuss the implications of this analysis for possible reforms of the appointments process

Policy Preference Change and Appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada

Canadian prime ministers appoint judges to the Supreme Court of Canada at their own discretion. This practice has been criticized as providing prime ministers with the ability to appoint judges whose policy preferences are regarded as politically congenial. We examine the Court\u27s judgments in the post-Charter era to discern the apparent policy preferences of the judges. Our results suggest that the policy preferences of judges are not strongly associated with the political party of the prime minister and that their policy preferences shift over time in seemingly unpredictable ways. We discuss the implications of this analysis for possible reforms of the appointments process

State Regulatory Competition and the Threat to Corporate Governance

The subject of this paper is the impact of the new globalized order on the integrity of corporate governance. Corporate governance is the system of laws, markets and institutions that seeks to control and discipline corporate activity in the service of the public interest. Over the last several years, many critics have bemoaned the growing integration of various economic markets across national boundaries because it is seen to lessen the capacity of states to regulate corporate behaviour. Essentially, the claim is that in a setting of reduced barriers to factor and product mobility, corporations are rendered much more effective in their capacity to extract regulatory concessions from host governments, and these concessions have the effect of lowering social welfare. The argument is that in a setting of high international corporate mobility, footloose corporations will relocate their operations to whichever jurisdiction offers the most congenial (meaning least stringent) regulation. In the face of certain corporate migration in response to more stringent regulation, states will have no choice but to refrain from adopting socially optimal regulation. This is because states fear the loss of benefits associated with corporate activity: namely, employment, investment and tax revenue. The effect is an international race to the bottom in which states are rendered helpless in countering the effect of heightened corporate mobility

Charter Decisions in the McLachlin Era: Consensus and Ideology at the Supreme Court of Canada

This paper examines how justices on the Supreme Court of Canada voted in Charter appeals between 2000 and 2009. Charter appeals, at least in popular belief (and possibly also in the ory), have the greatest potential to reveal voting that is influenced by extra-legal policy preferences. Confining the analysis to the time during which Chief Justice McLachlin has led the Court aids in controlling for the effects of a particular Chief Justice in assessing the roles of ideology and consensus. Several of the Court’s members have exhibited sharply different voting proclivities in section 15 (equality rights) appeals as compared with Charter claims made in the context of criminal law appeals (and, indeed, other Charter appeals). This finding suggests that at least some of the justices on the Court have been influenced by policy preferences on at least some occasions in discrete areas of Charter rights adjudication. On the other hand, it also suggests that judicial policy preferences are richer and significantly more nuanced than can adequately be captured by a simple “right-left” or “conservative-liberal” characterization of these policy preferences. The paper discusses a number of implications of the analysis and findings

The Legacy of UK Tax Concepts in Canadian Income Tax Law

This article examines a specific category of legal transfers between the United Kingdom and Canada, considering the legacy of UK tax concepts in Canadian income tax law. Two main areas are considered where, in our view, this influence has been most profound: (i) the concept of income deployed for Canadian tax purposes; and (ii) judicial approaches to statutory interpretation and tax avoidance. Although the rules and concepts that Canadian courts and legislatures have adopted in each of these areas have necessarily evolved over time, the path of this evolution as well as current approaches reflect the enduring influence of UK tax concepts on Canadian income tax law. The first substantive section examines the structure and concept of income in Canadian tax law, linking its origins and development to the global and schedular taxes that were adopted in the United Kingdom in 1799 and 1803, and to the source and trust concepts that UK courts have employed to interpret the meaning of income for tax purposes. The next section considers judicial approaches to the interpretation of tax statutes and tax avoidance in Canada, tracing the origins of a strict construction approach to interpretation and a formalistic approach to the characterisation of transactions and relationships to early judicial decisions in the UK, and explaining the influence of this traditional approach on subsequent legislative and judicial developments. The final section concludes that the traditional approach endures, albeit uneasily, in Canadian income tax law in the continuing emphasis on textual interpretation of tax legislation and in the formalist application of the general anti-avoidance rule by the Supreme Court of Canada

An Income-Contingent Financing Program for Ontario

Although the positive externalities associated with higher education favour substantial government support, sound arguments also favour student contributions to the costs of post-secondary education, based on both the private benefits obtained and the regressive impact of general subsidies for higher education. At the same time, the central role that higher education performs as a vehicle for social mobility and the general reluctance of private lenders to finance individual investments in higher education suggest that governments also have an important role to play in the area of student assistance - ensuring that higher education is accessible to all students on the basis of merit, irrespective of financial ability. The need for a well-designed student assistance program is more important than ever. Among many proposals for a restructured student aid system, one of the most promising is to replace existing \u27mortgage-style\u27 student loads with a financing arrangement involving repayment obligations that depend on the student\u27s income after graduation. To the extent that this \u27income-contingent\u27 approach reduces the risk to borrowers with respect to their investments in higher education, it will likely lessen the reluctance that students exhibit with respect to such borrowing. Moreover, where funding covers both the direct costs of higher education as well as living expenses, income-contingent financing programs may enhance accessibility by making higher education effectively free at the point of purchase - offsetting the \u27sticker shock\u27 associated with increased tuition fees as well as living costs which generally exceed the direct costs of higher education. Finally, collection through the income tax should reduce the incidence of nonpayment and dramatically lessen the costs of administering student financial aid. This paper proposes an income-contingent financing program (ICFP) for Ontario to replace the current system of mortgage-style loans, automatic debt remission, and interest and debt relief available under the Ontario Student Assistance Program. Part 1 reviews the current system of government-provided student aid in Ontario, providing an essential foundation for our subsequent proposal for an ICFP. Part 2 examines the experience with ICFPs in Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and the UK, in order to derive lessons relevant to the design of an ICFP for Ontario. Part 3 considers the essential features of an ICFP, canvassing the competing arguments and making specific recommendations informed by our review of the current system in Ontario and the international experience with ICFPs

Legislated Interpretation and Tax Avoidance in Canadian Income Tax Law

Predictable statutory interpretation helps ensure the reliable operation of contemporary systems of taxation. Tax liabilities that are not clearly expressed and articulated by legislatures lead to over-reliance on litigation as a means to enforce and clarify legislative intent. For this reason, modern legislatures continually amend and draft new tax provisions, reformulating existing rules and introducing new ones to address ever-changing social and economic environments. Moreover, legislatures also respond with amendments directed at judicial decisions with which they disagree, as well as the transactions and arrangements at issue in these cases. As these amended and new rules are then subject to application and interpretation by revenue departments, taxpayers, tax advisors, and the courts, all of which legislatures may respond to through further subsequent amendments, tax legislation at any given time can be regarded as the recursive product of an ongoing dialogue.At the same time, the proliferation of ever-more detailed provisions in tax legislation greatly increases the complexity of these statutes. The consequent tendency toward textual interpretation of tax legislation can facilitate tax avoidance that undermines the capacity of a tax system to raise revenue in a manner that is fair or equitable. For this reason, tax statutes like the Canadian Income Tax Act (ITA) typically combine detailed statutory provisions with more broadly-worded anti-avoidance rules that deny unintended tax advantages that might otherwise result from other statutory provisions. At the apex of these anti-avoidance rules stand general anti-avoidance rules (GAARs) like section 245 of the ITA. Section 245 denies tax benefits resulting from tax-motivated transactions that result in a misuse of other provisions of the ITA or other relevant enactments, or an abuse having regard to these provisions read as a whole.In order to “legislate” statutory interpretation, therefore, legislatures generally employ two different approaches: enacting detailed rules in response to changing circumstances and judicial decisions, while simultaneously directing courts to prevent abusive tax avoidance by applying more generalized standards that require them to go beyond or behind the text of the tax legislation in order to deny tax benefits claimed by taxpayers that conflict with the object, spirit or purpose of these provisions. As this paper explains, judicial experience in Canada demonstrates a tension between these two approaches, since the existence of detailed statutory rules can make courts reluctant to apply a general anti-avoidance rule that requires them to depart from the statutory text.This paper considers the GAAR in section 245 of the ITA as an example of legislated statutory interpretation, explaining the origins and structure of this provision and the extent to which it has shaped the interpretation of Canadian income tax law. Part II provides a background to the GAAR, contrasting the textual and formalist approach to tax statutes that was traditionally adopted by English and Canadian courts with the more purposive and substantive approach adopted by U.S. courts as well as English and Canadian courts in the 1980s and early 1990s. Part III explains the basic structure of the GAAR and the way in which Canadian courts have interpreted key elements of this provision. Part IV reviews key tax avoidance cases after the GAAR was introduced, illustrating a lingering affect of pre-GAAR interpretive approaches in the post-GAAR world, from which the courts have only begun to depart. Part V concludes

Symposium on Tax Avoidance after Canada Trustco and Mathew: Summary of Proceedings

On October 19, 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada released its much-anticipated decisions in The Queen v. Canada Trustco Mortgage Co. and Mathew v. The Queen, the first two cases from Canada\u27s highest court addressing the general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR) in section 245 of the federal Income Tax Act. The Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto hosted a symposium on November 18, 2005, which brought together academics, practitioners, representatives of the Canada Revenue Agency, and Chief Justice Donald Bowman of the Tax Court of Canada to discuss the implications of the decisions. This article summarizes the formal presentations and comments of participants in the proceedings