The Progressive Economics Forum

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 from a goose: “ obtain the [...]

Finance Canada published its annual Tax Expenditure Report for 2011 and it shows that the cost of some of the most inequitable tax preferences and loopholes continues to rise. For instance the stock option deduction, which allows CEOs and executives to pay tax at half the rate of ordinary working income, is estimated to cost the federal [...]

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.  Its focus was almost exclusively [...]

Amidst the plethora of media reports on “payroll tax” increases for 2012, there was little mention of increases in benefits.  For example, the Toronto Sun,cued by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, reported: If you feel a hand grabbing at your wallet next week, calling the cops won’t do any good because it’s the federal government picking [...]

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, Santa Flaherty seems to have [...]

The following also appears in The Globe and Mail’s Economy Lab: Earlier this week, Kevin Milligan questioned proposals “to increase the tax on capital gains.” Currently, Canadian income tax applies to only 50 per cent of capital gains. Milligan argues that light personal taxation is justified for income that has already been subject to corporate [...]

As Christmas presents go, this one was a shocker:  Over lunch on Monday, cash-strapped Finance Minister Jim Flaherty promised provincial and territorial finance ministers he’d increase federal funding for health care by six per cent each year for the next five years.  No strings attached. No negotiations.  A done deal.  With a catch. The provinces [...]

Following concern expressed by the IMF, the Conference Board and of course thousands of protesters around the world, the OECD has just released an extensive 400 page report on the problem of growing inequality: Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps on Rising. I haven’t read through it yet, and it also has quite a lot [...]

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 were close to US$10 trillion. [...]

In a week when business lobby groups are appearing before the House of Commons Committee on Finance and calling for more tax breaks, the federal R&D Panel appointed a year ago released a very good report saying Canada’s very generous system of R&D tax incentives haven’t been effective and what we need instead are more direct grants [...]

This is not the stuff of usual protests. Over the past month, a little idea from a Vancouver outfit has mushroomed into a cross-continent movement. Occupy Wall Street, kicked off by Adbusters in July and coming to Toronto this weekend, has already spread to 70 American cities and is going global as protestors challenge society [...]

I rarely give thanks for Neil Reynolds, but today’s column is a must-read. The point is that taxing large inheritances should appeal not only to those of us concerned about highly unequal outcomes, but also to those simply concerned about equality of opportunity. It may or may not be possible to justify inequalities based on differences [...]

Over at the Globe and Mail Economy Lab our friend Stephen Gordon argues that there are only limited revenues to be gained by taxing the rich. He plays around with some back of the envelope calculations based on CRA data on the incomes of those making more than $500,000 – accurately enough, I think -  [...]

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 [...]

Besides the carbon tax, one of the most important BC government climate action initiatives has been the adoption of Carbon Neutral Government. That is, count emissions from public buildings and travel, reduce them as much as possible and pay for carbon offsets to negate the rest. As of the 2010 calendar year, the BC government [...]

Down south, the Obama administration is in a dangerous game of chicken with Republican congressional leaders, who are cynically holding the US economy hostage in order to impose a radical agenda of spending cuts. Obama has seemingly bought into the rhetoric of cutting debt, rather than focusing on the real US problem of unemployment. Yet, [...]

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 [...]

With much of the talk on taxes in BC about the HST, we issued a new report today that looks at the bigger context for BC’s tax system (Vancouver Sun oped here, CTV News story here). Iglika Ivanova, Seth Klein and I compare and contrast BC’s tax system after a decade where tax cuts were [...]

University of Sherbrooke economist and fiscal specialist Luc Godbout with Suzie St-Cerny and Michaël Robert-Angers has just published a timely research paper evaluating the net fiscal impact on households of Québec’s income tax system.Timely because, as discussed here be Armine Yalnizyan recent data from stats can shows that though globally income inequality has risen during [...]

Was it worth the wait?  Hardly.   Today’s federal budget is about as appetizing as two month-old pizza warmed up in the microwave.  I guess they deserve high marks for consistency, though not for economic policy or a long list of other things. The Harper government’s June Budget is almost entirely a reprinted version of the [...]

Doug Saunders, of the Globe and Mail, has gamely launched a real and meaningful discussion about corporate tax cuts on these pages. See the comments section of this post. Since that forum was getting unwieldly, I’m starting a new post. Doug’s stated pursuit (and mine, and I wager most readers’) – how to harness growth [...]

There’s a disturbing trend buried in this morning’s report by Statscan on Canada’s foreign direct investment (FDI) abroad.  Not only is an increasing share of Canadian direct investment abroad going through finance and insurance industries, but a growing share is also being funnelled into tax havens. The finance and insurance now accounts for over 52% of all [...]

A new progressive, grassroots tax fairness advocacy organization has just been established in Canada–and its first initiative is a petition and campaign to stop additional corporate tax cuts.   The text is below.   If you are in agreement, please sign on  and pass this on to your contacts. We, the undersigned, oppose additional corporate tax cuts which [...]

A shorter version of this analysis was published today in the Globe and Mail’s online business feature Economy Lab. Stephen Harper has unveiled yet another plank in a platform that seems remarkably out of touch with the concerns of an electorate walking on post-recession eggshells. His latest proposal would double the contribution limit to the [...]

In response to some recent PEF commentary (now in the mainstream media thanks to today’s Globe article) on corporations in Canada hoarding cash (after-tax profits greater than new investment), PEF member Eric Pineault weighs in with some more detailed analysis: The great corporate cash stash Eric Pineault As we debate the merits and uses of [...]

First of all, today’s top Globe story on corporate income tax cuts not leading to increased investment is a nice example of “you heard it here first”, so a big pat on the back to Relentlessly Progressive Economics. As we like to say: tomorrow’s conventional wisdom, today. I want to take issue with Stephen Gordon’s [...]

Today the CCPA released a study that I authored which examines and debunks one of the biggest contentions of this campaign, that corporate tax cuts create jobs. The payoff of corporate tax cuts has come under increasing scrutiny from various angles, although I focus specifically on job creation. To examine this contention, I took Canada’s [...]

Canada’s economic context at the time of Election 2011 is one of “precarious recovery”, and overall demand conditions are weakened by a few major factors. Unemployment is still just under 8%, which is good compared to the double-digit unemployment of the early 1990s, but not great compared to the expansions of the late 1990s and [...]

I did my taxes yesterday and once again was surprised to see how low my family’s income taxes have gone. In 2010, my wife and I paid a combined 13.7% of our income in federal and provincial income tax. Canadian modesty does not permit me to disclose the exact amount of income, but it was [...]

I recently posted on the CCPA’s “Making it Count” blog covering election 2011 issues. In that post, I calculated the distributional impacts of the “Family Tax Cut” proposed by the Conservatives that would allow couples with children under 18yrs old to split up to $50,000 of their income. The “Making it Count” post is meant [...]