The following commentary also appears on The Globe and Mail’s Global Exchange blog: What Obama’s Corporate Tax Proposal Means for Canada Last week, there was much consternation in Canada’s business press that some modest reversals of provincial corporate tax cuts and President Obama’s proposed corporate tax changes could erode our
Continue readingTag: corporate income tax
The Progressive Economics Forum: McGuinty’s Business Tax Breaks
An interesting nugget in last week’s Drummond report is Table 11.1, an updated version of Table 2 from “Ontario’s Tax Plan for Jobs and Growth” (2009). It provides a sectoral breakdown of the McGuinty government’s recent business tax breaks: providing HST input tax credits, cutting the corporate income tax, and
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Ontario’s Not Digging Deep Enough
PricewaterhouseCoopers’ biennial guide to Canadian mining taxation, Digging Deeper, features a comparative summary of royalties, mining taxes and corporate taxes for a hypothetical gold mine. This approach differs from the table I posted yesterday, which displayed royalty and mining tax revenue as a share of the minerals actually extracted from different provinces
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Race To The Trough: What Did Corporate Tax Cuts Deliver?
The CLC today celebrated Corporate Tax Freedom Day – defined as the day on which corporations have paid their share of all government taxes. It featured a race of mechanical pigs to a trough full of cash – with the pigs wearing the colours of leading Canadian corporations with large
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Corporate Taxes and Investment in Ontario
Last week, Ontario’s Ministry of Finance released the Ontario Economic Accounts for the third quarter of 2011. As The Globe reported, business investment was less than impressive: . . . investment in machinery and equipment fell slightly by 0.2 per cent between June and September, 2011, prompting Ontario Finance Minister
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Tax Shifting
Earlier this week, the Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab published a piece by Stephen Gordon arguing that high income and corporate taxes won’t generate much revenue. Gordon used used the metaphor of Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s (finance minister to the Louis XIV, the “Sun King”) that the art of taxation was like plucking feathers
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Strategy
December marked the three-year anniversary of Ontario’s Poverty Reduction Strategy. While I believe there is much to celebrate, much remains to be done. The Strategy surprised a lot of observers, especially in light of the fact that it was announced in December 2008, just as Ontario was entering a recession.
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Flaherty’s Christmas List – all Mixed Up
Following recent dismal reports on rising unemployment, stagnant GDP growth, and a deteriorating economic outlook, we can only hope federal Finance minister Jim Flaherty will provide some Christmas cheer with changes “to better promote job creation and economic growth” (as he’s asked for advice on through his pre-budget consultations). Unfortunately,
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Time for Corporate Canada to Step Up to the Plate
Mark Carney’s widely publicized speech on the state of the global and domestic economy is worth a careful read. He is bang on in much of his analysis of what ails the advanced economies today – the ongoing deleveraging from a long period of unsustainable public and private debt accumulation
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Corporate Tax Evasion on a Global Scale
This new study from Education International looks interesting. “This EI study follows on from a previous study published in March 2010 by Global Financial Integrity, a research and advocacy organisation promoting transparency in the international financial system, estimating that current total deposits just by non-residents in offshore and secrecy jurisdictions
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Unrest in Bill’s Republic of Doyle
PotashCorp CEO Bill Doyle waded into Saskatchewan’s election campaign on Friday with an op-ed in the province’s two largest newspapers. It was accompanied by a paid advertisement from PotashCorp in Saskatoon’s StarPhoenix. The company got some free advertising in Regina’s Leader-Post through Bruce Johnstone’s column, which repeated Doyle’s op-ed. The Saskatchewan Party is parroting the […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Sask Party Shills for PotashCorp
Yesterday’s strong earnings report from the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan confirms what this blog and the NDP have been contending: even modestly increasing Saskatchewan’s extremely low royalties on hugely profitable potash mines could fund substantially better provincial public services. The Saskatchewan Party still refuses to review potash royalties. In a well-timed column, Greg Fingas developed […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Globe on Corporate Cash Hoards
Today’s Globe and Mail (page B15) mentions the PEF in a story on the corporate sector’s record-breaking accumulation of cash, a subject about which we have often blogged. Corporate Canada has tripled its cash stash in each of the last two decades. The following Statistics Canada figures are “Canadian currency and deposits” plus “Foreign currency […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Ontario’s Corporate Tax Debate
Today’s Ottawa Citizen (page A15) features the following op-ed on Ontario corporate taxes. I have added links to references. I recently discussed this issue on TV Ontario: Corporate Taxes are Low Enough By Erin Weir, Ottawa Citizen, September 27, 2011 Corporate taxes are a major dividing line in Ontario’s election campaign. Liberals and Conservatives would […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Ontario NDP Platform: The Full Monty
Today, the Ontario NDP presented its comprehensive platform costing, including all policies announced during the election campaign. A popular theme among commentators has been that platform costings are unrealistic given the deteriorating economic outlook. As Andrea Horwath noted, her platform includes significant contingency funds. It is also cautiously built on the fiscal framework set out […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Ontario NDP Platform
Pollsters tell us that Ontario’s New Democrats may double their seat total in next month’s provincial election. It’s also entirely conceivable that they could be part of a coalition government at Queen’s Park. But what’s actually in the party’s election platform? One central feature of the NDP’s proposals is to implement a tax credit for companies that hire new workers. The tax […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: McGuinty’s Graph Misleads on Corporate Taxes
Further to Jim’s excellent critique of the Ontario Conservative platform’s graphs, I am similarly struck by the Liberal platform’s lone graph. “Cutting Ontario’s Taxes on New Business Investment in Half” (page 25) purports to show that corporate tax cuts are required to get the province’s “Marginal Effective Tax Rate” below the US and OECD averages. […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Rationalizing Corporate Canada’s Cash Stash
Statistics Canada figures indicate that private non-financial corporations held $471 billion of cash in the first quarter of 2011 ($322 billion of Canadian currency plus $149 billion worth of foreign currency). Including short-term paper would bring this total to half a trillion dollars, enough to pay off the national debt (i.e. accumulated deficit). Cash hoarding […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: The Underground Economy and Business Tax Evasion
Statscan have produced interesting and important new estimates of the upper bound size of the “underground” or “non observed” economy, putting it at a seemingly modest 2.2% of GDP in 2008. (Some of this is already included in GDP which is adjusted to take into account some hidden and unreported economic activity.) The 2.2% estimate […]
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: Evaluating Tax Cuts: You Read It Here First
Don Drummond has an op-ed in today’s Toronto Star concluding: Federal and provincial governments and the Canadian business sector should [establish] monitoring mechanisms that will permit regular reports to Canadians on whether the Canadian corporate tax revolution is producing benefits for them. As an advocate of corporate tax cuts, he believes that such benefits exist. […]
Continue reading