Business
Cut Corporate Income Taxes massively to increase growth, prosperity
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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Ian Madsen
The federal Liberal government’s current budget proposal to increase the inclusion rate for capital gains tax was met with justifiable criticism and opposition – primarily from business groups. There is another corporate income tax increase looming. A 2018 corporate tax reduction, intended to make Canada less uncompetitive versus the 2017-enacted tax reform and cut in the United States (which came into effect fully in 2018), is set to expire starting this year.
According to a study by University of Calgary’s School of Public Policy’s Trevor Tombe, Canada’s corporate income tax rate on new investments will jump from 13.7% to 17% by 2027. Even worse, for Canada’s high-value-added manufacturing sector, taxation will triple. For a nation that is having a hard time, encouraging both domestic or foreign investors to invest in new plant, equipment and related goods and services, to reverse meagre productivity growth – as noted by the Bank of Canada – this development is beyond questionable.
This rise will hinder future improvement in incomes and the standard of living – making it a serious issue. It should be obvious to policymakers that increasing income tax on businesses and investment should be avoided. The legislation to make the 2018 provisions permanent is, alarmingly, not urgent to politicians seeking to appease certain types of class warfare-cheering voters.
There is at least one policy that could make Canada more attractive to business, investors, and hard-pressed ordinary citizens. It would be, dramatically and substantially, slash corporate income taxes – plus make paying taxes easier, as Magna Corporation founder Frank Stronach has suggested. It may surprise some Canadians, but, Ottawa’s take from corporate income taxes is a relatively small, but fast rising proportion of federal overall revenue: 21%, in fiscal 2022-23, according to Ottawa, up from 13% in fiscal 2000-21 notes the OECD.
This may seem ‘just fine’: let companies pay the taxes and reduce the tax burden on ordinary people. However, what actually happens is that every corporate expense, including taxes, reduces cash flow. The money remaining could either be reinvested or paid out as dividends to owners. A reminder: owners are founding families; pension fund beneficiaries (employees, citizens); and ordinary individuals.
As to reinvesting available funds, the less there are, the less capital investment can occur. Investment is required to replace existing equipment, or add new equipment, devices, software and vehicles for businesses. This not only keeps companies competitive, but also makes employees more productive. This, in turn, makes the whole economy more profitable, thereby increasing taxes paid to governments.
As for the dubious reason for the tax hike, gaining more revenue – recent experience in the United States is instructive. The 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act reduced corporate income tax from 39% of pre-tax income to 21%. The result: U.S. federal corporate income tax revenue rose 25% from 2017 to fiscal 2021. Capital investment rose dramatically too, by 20%, a key goal of many Canadian policymakers.
Taxes should be cut, enabling productivity improvement and bringing a future prosperity that we all yearn for. It would also keep us internationally competitive. We are currently mediocre, being around a 25% rate (OECD).
Canada has a hard time attracting investors. Now, our trading partners are leaving us in the dust.
Ian Madsen is the Senior Policy Analyst at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Business
Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy
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From the Fraser Institute
By Matthew Lau
In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.
According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.
Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.
While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.
The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.
Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.
Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.
Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.
Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.
Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.
Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.
With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.
Business
‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`
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From LifeSiteNews
The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.
Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”
The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”
PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.
“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.
“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”
Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”
Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.
DOGE is currently conducting a thorough review of federal executive-branch spending for the Trump administration, efforts that left-wing activists are challenging in court. The official DOGE website currently claims credit for a total estimated savings of $55 billion.
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