The Progressive Economics Forum

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 competitiveness. Canadians should maintain a [...]

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. [...]

Earlier today, Elections BC announced the much anticipated HST referendum results. British Columbians have voted to scrap the HST. The best part about having the results is that now we can move on from the narrow issue of what type of sales tax is better and focus our energies on some of the bigger issues [...]

One of my main undertakings on this blog has been to debunk Jack Mintz’s relentless advocacy of tax cuts for large corporations. However, I also give him credit when he proposes good policy, such as raising potash royalties and the small-business corporate tax rate. This past week, he was out with a paper on the [...]

Perhaps the most compelling villain on Star Trek: The Next Generation was the Borg, which seeks to assimilate other groups into its hive. The Macdonald-Laurier Institute seems to be performing this function for Canada’s conservative pundits (although corporate-tax cutters also resemble the Ferengi). Yesterday’s Globe featured an op-ed by Brian Lee Crowley, former President of [...]

Ten days ago, Jack Mintz released yet another paper claiming that international competitiveness requires continued corporate tax cuts. In addition to the usual questionable interpretations, it featured at least one straight factual error. Mintz inaccurately reports Iceland’s 2010 statutory corporate tax rate as 15% (Table 2 on page 7 and Table 3 on page 9 [...]

The main objection to my argument about the treasury transfer effect is that American companies do not actually repatriate their Canadian profits and pay US corporate tax on them. As The Globe reported: Jack Mintz, director of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary, said the unique tax status of U.S. companies [...]

The fiscal implications of corporate income tax (CIT) cuts are a key issue in the current debate. Federal cabinet ministers and Neil Reynolds have boldly asserted that lower CIT rates will increase CIT revenues. As Andrew and I have pointed out, this claim is implausible and not supported by the government’s own Department of Finance. [...]

This was posted on the Globe and Mail’s online feature Economy Lab today. My sincere thanks to all the people who have posted on the topic on this site. The Harper government ’s commitment to further reduce the general corporate income tax rate while the nation struggles with budgetary deficits has been championed by – [...]

Jack Mintz is out today with yet another paper applauding the federal corporate tax cut from 18% in 2010 to 15% in 2012. Revenue Fudge He claims that the revenue loss will be “relatively small” or “relatively insignificant” without actually suggesting a dollar amount (pages 3 and 20). By comparison, the Department of Finance (see [...]

To provide a little context for our current national debate on foreign investment, I did a little digging recently in the FDI data. Some of my findings surprised me.  Yes, Canada exports slightly more FDI capital than we import (that is, the net investment position in FDI is slightly positive).  But most of what we [...]

On Thursday, Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall said “No” to BHP: Do we want to add PotashCorp to that list of once-proud Canadian companies that are now under foreign control? . . . It’s our government’s belief that the people of Saskatchewan deserve nothing less than a potash industry unequivocally managed, operated and marketed for the [...]

Jack Vicq is Saskatchewan’s answer to Jack Mintz, a relentless advocate of lower taxes for high-income individuals and profitable corporations. His first report for the provincial government presaged massive personal income tax cuts in 2000 (which soon pushed the province into deficit). His second report for the provincial government presaged massive corporate tax cuts. Saskatchewan [...]

Among the concerns about the HST that we at the CCPA have raised was the poor timing of the tax change. From my pre-budget piece last September: If British Columbians respond to the HST by reducing their consumer spending, the timing of the HST introduction may actually slow down the economic recovery, which should be [...]

As BC and Ontario have now started paying the HST at the till, many people may be wondering when exactly can we expect to see those jobs postings opening up. This is a good question. According to analysis commissioned by the BC government from economist Jack Mintz, titled British Columbia’s Harmonized Sales Tax: A Giant [...]

There have been clouds and clouds of smoke generated about the impact of Ontario’s impending introduction of its Harmonized Sales Tax.  Fortunately there is finally now some substance out there in terms of a detailed analysis conducted by Statistics Canada that was recently released by the Ontario NDP.  And what is shows is quite surprising. Much [...]

I have just returned from Calgary and the pension forum organized by Jack Mintz through the University of Calgary. Mintz was, of course, the author of a recent research report to the federal and provincial finance ministers which concluded that the status quo was basically working well, except for a modest proportion of middle income [...]

The Ottawa Economics Association (OEA) held a conference today and yesterday evening. The usual suspects were in attendance saying the usual things: Mark Carney spoke about the need for China to understand the risks of the “paradox of thrift” (see my post from earlier today) that will be unleashed by fiscal consolidation. Don Drummond sang [...]

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has taken a shine to the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Over the past month, he and other Liberals have repeatedly cited it. Indeed, McGuinty invoked the CCPA’s name four times in the provincial legislature on February 17. However, he first did so the day before that: Ms. Andrea Horwath: [...]

The Alberta government is reversing its modest increase in conventional oil and gas royalties. Albertans will now receive an even smaller fraction of the value of their resources. The saving grace is that the provincial government did not cut royalties on the oil sands, which are projected to provide more revenue than conventional reserves going [...]

Yesterday afternoon, I caught the subway down to Queen’s Park to find out whether the throne speech would shed any light on the provincial government’s privatization plans. As it turned out, the speech included only a couple of lines on Crown corporations. But I ran into blogger extraordinaire Warren Kinsella at the legislature and note [...]

I blogged back in August to express some concern about the implications of Jack Mintz’s appointment as research director for the federal and provincial finance minister’s review of the Canadian pension system. http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2009/08/06/jack-mintz-research-and-pensions/#comment-20646 .   Suffice to say now that the general thrust of  his report, tabled this week,  http://www.fin.gc.ca/activty/pubs/pension/riar-narr-eng.asp , did not come as a [...]

A TD-Pembina-Suzuki study released seven weeks ago projected that cutting Canada’s carbon emissions by 20% below 2006 levels, or even 25% below 1990 levels, would only modestly reduce overall Canadian GDP. Last week, Jack Mintz critiqued this study for positing a fixed amount of capital investment in Canada. Under this highly dubious assumption, climate policy [...]

Public debate in Ontario tends to frame sales-tax harmonization either as an unjustified “tax grab” or as a needed contribution to the deteriorating provincial budget.  Both views incorrectly assume that the HST will increase government revenues. In fact, the original proposal was more or less revenue neutral. Removing sales tax from business inputs and cutting personal [...]

This past week, Jack Mintz issued a report (PDF) praising Ontario’s last provincial budget. I like East Side Mario’s because it features both all-you-can-eat bread and all-you-can-eat salad. So, it is not surprising that a corporate tax-fighter would love a budget featuring both corporate income tax cuts and the removal of sales tax from business [...]

Should we care that the marginal effective tax rate on capital is higher in Prince Edward Island than in Serbia? Of course, this question is a joke. But the C. D. Howe Institute actually did put out a press release (PDF) last week singling out PEI for its allegedly high business taxes compared to an [...]

I had been fiddling with my last post in spare moments since the federal NDP convention. I fiddled long enough that Jack Mintz beat me to the punch in critiquing the proposal to eliminate corporate tax on small-business profits. His op-ed appeared in yesterday’s Financial Post. His priority is to slash the general corporate tax [...]

It is a bit stunning to discover that Jack Mintz – former head of the CD Howe Institute and now at the University of Calgary – has been appointed research director of the federal – provincial review of pensions. http://www.vancouversun.com/business/fp/Jack+Mintz+research+director+pension+reform+task+force/1794203/story.html Even Finance Minister Flaherty should be a bit embarassed to appoint as a “researcher” someone [...]

I recently had the pleasure of serving with Stephen Gordon on a panel about economics and blogging. Over at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, he has been leading a one-man crusade against reducing the eligibility requirement for Employment Insurance (EI) benefits to 360 hours. His stated goal is to provide better protection for unemployed workers and counter-cyclical [...]

We are now into full blown Budget consultation mode, with MPs of all parties going through a bit more than the usual pretence of listening before the actual Budget is finally put to bed by the government a few days hence. For once, even the Conservative inner circle seem a bit unsure of where to [...]