The Coming Energy Transition: Industry’s Opportunities Are Not Just In Canada

Global policy rhetoric suggests that a great energy transition will soon be underway, driven in large part by electric vehicle (EV) and fuel-efficiency mandates. Shifting away from carbon-emitting fossil fuels toward cleaner, renewable sources of electric energy will require no less than an order of magnitude more mined minerals and rare earth elements, and Canada has a limited share of these transition minerals. Most of North America’s critical transition minerals will have to come from reserves in South America, Africa, and the Caribbean as well as Australia and China, which will see economic growth from mining jobs and capital investments. The authors conclude that Canada’s participation in the energy transition mining market may hinge on the shape of its regulatory and taxation framework for mining companies

Tax Policy Trends: Corporate Tax Policy: Alberta Goes Its Own Way

When it comes to corporate tax policy, Alberta is taking a different path than the federal government and other provinces. Alberta’s May 28th Job Creation Tax Cut will reduce the provincial corporate income tax rate from 12% to 8% in lieu of introducing accelerated depreciation that was adopted by federal government November 20182 , including a 100% write-off for clean energy and manufacturing

Tax Policy Trends: Canadian Policy Makers Consider Response to U.S. Tax Overhaul

Following a recent major overhaul of the U.S. corporate and personal tax system, there has been much concern expressed regarding Canada’s diminished tax advantage and its attractiveness as an investment destination in comparison to the U.S. Among the proposed tax policy responses, some in the business community have called for Canada to adopt accelerated deprecation for machinery, a central component of the U.S. corporate tax reform. The U.S. tax reform, known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act centered on two major corporate tax changes that dramatically reduced the marginal effective tax rate faced by large U.S. corporations

2020 TAX COMPETITIVENESS REPORT: CANADA’S INVESTMENT CHALLENGE

Canada is already at a disadvantage with lagging growth and productivity even before the massive economic destruction caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Before the pandemic hit, Canada’s corporate tax system was already becoming uncompetitive in attracting highly profitable investments relative to other developed countries. Canada’s general corporate tax rate, averaging 26.1 per cent, is within spitting distance of the highest rates inthe OECD. While some industries may benefit from special preferences, the corporate tax has become increasingly inefficient and complex with targeted measures, and in some cases impeding the allocation of capital to growth industries like communications and services. This was having a serious effect on Canada’s economic health before COVID-19. Business investment in Canada has lagged that of many countries since 2015, well before the pandemic. Productivity has been weak and wages for workers have been depressed, particularly for unskilled labour. Additionally, the corporate tax system currently distorts the allocation of capital in the economy, favouring some sectors over others. In fact, some of the sectors least-favoured by the tax system — including retail and tourism, which face an eight-point tax disadvantage compared to the government- favoured manufacturing sector — are the very ones that had the roughest time during the pandemic and face a more difficult road to recovery. If Canada is going to “build back better,” as some politicians claim to want, it will need investors willing to build things. That will require governments focusing on policies that stimulate economic growth, including tax reform. While it is politically popular for some parties to push for higher corporate tax rates, that won’t solve our investment problem. Some limited benefit can be realized by reducing tax rates and broadening the corporate base elsewhere but Canada’s unwieldy corporate income tax has become too serious for those measures to sufficiently address the problem. A broader approach to corporate tax reform will be required to ensure that Canada is able to recover to good economic health after the COVID-19 pandemic

Tax Policy Trends: Canadian Policy Makers Respond to U.S. Tax Overhaul

Following the 2017 overhaul of the U.S. corporate and personal tax system, 2018 has seen much discussion regarding Canada’s diminished tax advantage and its attractiveness as an investment destination in comparison to the U.S. In the November 21st 2018 Economic Update, the federal government’s response was finally unveiled. The central policy included a generous temporary accelerated capital cost allowance. This strategy largely follows a plan of action championed by the Canadian business community and emulates features of the U.S. corporate tax reform. However, as we point out below, tinkering with depreciation schedules distorts further the corporate tax system and fails to deal with other competitive issues that can only be addressed by changes to the statutory corporate income tax rates

Income Adequacy Among Canadian Seniors: Helping Singles Most

Canadians have heard a great deal of discussion in the national media about expanding the Canada Pension Plan (CPP), driven by concerns that many will retire without having made proper arrangements to adequately replace their incomes with pensions and savings. But the proposed remedies have been targeted at the retirement-income shortfalls potentially faced by relatively comfortable middle-class and well-off retirees. A far more pressing concern is the disproportionate vulnerability of one particular group: Single retirees living alone. The estimated poverty rate among seniors in Canada is among the lowest in the industrialized world according to the OECD. But elderly singles living alone face significantly higher rates of income inadequacy than their peers. Elderly singles are overwhelmingly female, and they are twice as likely to be below Statistics Canada’s Low Income Cut-Off threshold than the general population, and four times as likely to be below the threshold as the elderly population as a whole. But the CPP policy ideas currently being batted around are unlikely to offer much help to this especially vulnerable group. Because females comprise roughly 70 per cent of elderly singles, and because of historically lower labour-force participation rates among females, a substantial portion of single elderly are entitled to few or no CPP benefits of their own (let alone other pensions), beyond the considerably reduced survivor CPP benefits collected by those who have been widowed. Survivor benefits, however, would not be available to the growing number of senior divorcees. Meanwhile, women tend to have longer life expectancies than men do, typically stretching retirement resources beyond what would otherwise be required for males. There are two relatively straightforward policy changes that could directly target benefits to help the single elderly living alone who are below the low income cut-off (LICO threshold). One is to modify the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) top up strictly for elderly people living alone. Another would be to simply expand the CPP survivor benefit from 60 per cent of the deceased spouse’s entitlement to 100 per cent. These policies are not without cost, of course. But the cost is not prohibitive. If the federal government were to allot $1.35 billion to these kinds of targeted policies, it could slash the number of single seniors living below the low income cut-off by half. With another$87 million, it could reduce the number by two-thirds. These amount, respectively, to just a 3.5 per cent and 5.8 per cent increase over current annual federal spending on elderly benefits. With Canadian policy-makers willing to spend resources and efforts on strengthening CPP benefits for relatively comfortable Canadians, it seems only appropriate that policies aimed at helping our most vulnerable seniors avoid poverty should come first

Enhancing the Alberta Tax Advantage with a Harmonized Sales Tax

Alberta enjoys a reputation as a fiercely competitive jurisdiction when it comes to tax rates. But the reality is that the province can do better with a tax mix that has greater emphasis on consumption, rather than income tax levies. While Alberta has a personal tax advantage compared to other Canadian jurisdictions — but not the United States — it relies most heavily on income taxes and non-resource revenues that impinges on investment and saving. Taxes on new investment in Alberta’s non-resource sectors are no better than average, compared to other countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, so it is not exceptionally attractive to many different kinds of investors. And Alberta’s corporate income tax rate is not much more competitive than the world average for manufacturing and service companies. By introducing the Harmonized Sales Tax with a provincial rate of 8 per cent (in addition to the federal 5 per cent rate), Alberta has the ability to make its tax system more competitive. An HST would even allow the province to entirely eliminate income tax for the majority of families. And because the HST would be easily administered using the same collection mechanisms that already exist for the GST, implementing a new Alberta HST could be done relatively smoothly and with minimal additional administration costs. Adopting an Alberta HST is the simplest, most efficient and fairest way to reform the provincial tax system, and will deliver noticeable benefits to Albertans, most visibly in the form of significant income tax relief. It would enable the province to raise the income-tax exemption from $17,593 to$57,250, making it possible for couples to earn up to $114,500 free of any provincial income taxes. In addition, the province could lower income tax rates for income over that amount from 10 to nine per cent. And with the revenue from the HST, Alberta would have the capacity to lower its general corporate income tax from 10 to 8.43 per cent, reducing taxes on investment. An HST could also bring in an estimated$800 million in additional annual revenue from tourists and visitors, and would likely entitle the province to a $1.3 billion HST transition payment from the federal government. If the government can convince Albertans that the sales tax would be revenue neutral, and can promise simultaneous significant tax cuts to personal incomes, as well as corporate tax reductions that will enhance Alberta’s competitiveness, then winning public support is possible. The task of persuading the public must fall to bold politicians. But if provincial legislators truly value tax fairness, competitiveness, and the future fiscal stability of the province, they have a duty to convince voters that an HST is the right choice for Alberta

Whether it is the U.S. House or Senate Tax Cut Plan – It’s Trouble for Canadian Competitiveness

In the past two weeks, Senate and House Republicans have put forward parallel mark-up bills in a step toward reform of the U.S. personal and corporate tax systems. The respective bills titled, “TAX CUTS AND JOBS ACT” (TCJA) are based on previous proposals put forward by Congressional Republicans, most notably their recent “UNIFIED FRAMEWORK FOR FIXING OUR BROKEN TAX CODE” released in September

2015 Tax-Competitiveness Report: Canada is Losing its Attractiveness

It can be easy for Canadians who appreciate the qualities of their country to overestimate the power that it also has to lure investment in a world where so many other destinations are competing for capital. Canadians can take pride in our political stability and our highly educated workforce, and we do have good communication and transportation infrastructure, but a great number of other countries offer those things, too, at roughly the same level. Meanwhile, Canada suffers in the eyes of investors for being a relatively small market, distant from large export destinations, with a cold climate and geographic vastness that only raise the cost of doing business here. Canada has been able to overcome its disadvantages in recent years largely by being highly competitive on business taxes. Unfortunately, the tendency of Canadian provincial and federal governments lately to raise taxes on business has been rapidly erasing that slight advantage. Dangerously, Canada is beginning to lose its competitive edge. It is difficult enough in a world of slower global growth to attract investment, but some major economies with whom Canada directly competes for investment have recognized the need in this challenging environment to make themselves even more attractive to investors. It is true that some countries, such as Belgium, Chile, Brazil, Greece and India have, like Canada, enacted certain policies — primarily higher business taxes — that have increased their marginal effective tax rate (METR). Still, other important peer countries have been working to lower theirs; notably Denmark, Japan, France, Portugal, Switzerland and the U.K. As a result of their cuts, and because of changes to policies in Canada that have increased METRs here, Canada has sunk from having the 16th-highest burden on capital in the OECD (which was at least in the middle of the pack) to having the 13th highest. We now have the sixth-highest rather than lowest METR in the G7. In a compilation of 92 countries, Canada finds itself in the middle of the pack with the 35th highest tax burden on capital. The blame for this is shared by provincial and federal governments. In recent years, governments in Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Alberta and B.C. have all raised business taxes (Alberta now has a higher corporate income tax than B.C. Ontario or Quebec). Quebec has scaled back incentives for investors, Manitoba increased its sales tax, and B.C. eliminated the harmonized sales tax, reintroducing the burden on business inputs implicit in the provincial retail sales tax. With the U.S. election of Donald Trump and a Republican Congress promising to reduce corporate income tax rates, as well as the recent affirmation by British Prime Minister Theresa May to lower the U.K. corporate income tax rate to 17 per cent, the pressure will be to reduce, not increase corporate income taxes in the next several years. Should the U.S. dramatically reduce its corporate tax rate, Canada will lose its business tax advantage altogether. Just as concerning, Canada has created a tax system that discriminates against the service sector, including transportation, communications, construction, trade, and business and financial services, all of which are among the fastest-growing sectors, and play a key role in facilitating innovation, infrastructure and trade. Canada’s tax policies continue to favour slower-growing sectors, namely manufacturing and resources. The good news is that Canada can regain competitiveness without drastic tax reform. It is clear that there needs to be greater neutrality among sectors so that service industries are not discriminated against (the same is true for large businesses versus small businesses). Meanwhile, those provinces that still have a retail sales tax can improve their attractiveness by moving to the HST, as other provinces have. The federal government is also in the midst of reviewing subsidies and other tax expenditures that create an unlevel playing field. However, instead of spending that money as it plans to, it should consider Canada’s falling competitiveness and use the revenues to lower the corporate income tax. With the savings, it could afford to cut that tax from 15 to 13 per cent, not only remaining revenue neutral, but likely actually increasing the corporate tax base in the process

The Coming Energy Transition: Industry’s Opportunities Are Not Just In Canada

Global policy rhetoric suggests that a great energy transition will soon be underway, driven in large part by electric vehicle (EV) and fuel-efficiency mandates. Shifting away from carbon-emitting fossil fuels toward cleaner, renewable sources of electric energy will require no less than an order of magnitude more mined minerals and rare earth elements, and Canada has a limited share of these transition minerals. Most of North America’s critical transition minerals will have to come from reserves in South America, Africa, and the Caribbean as well as Australia and China, which will see economic growth from mining jobs and capital investments. The authors conclude that Canada’s participation in the energy transition mining market may hinge on the shape of its regulatory and taxation framework for mining companies