Corporate tax reform has long been a contentious issue in Canada. Official commissions, academics and others have often proposed changes in the way we tax corporations. During the last 30 years, perhaps largely owing to concerns about international competitiveness, the corporate tax rate has...

Overview of The Report on the Panel on the Role of Government(2004). This Report includes recommendations for a number of new spending initiatives, as well as regulatory and tax reforms. The purpose of this review is to appraise the fiscal feasibility of implementing the Panel's recommendations...

This paper begins by comparing the 1967 Smith committee’s three volume report on Ontario taxation with the 1993 report by the Ontario Fair Tax Commission. These two very different investigations of Ontario’s tax structure, produced in two very different economic and political climates,...

Canada has operated both a federal value-added tax (the GST) and two variants of provincial VATs for the last 15 years. In addition, several provinces have continued to operate retail sales taxes similar to those in most US states. A brief review of experience around the world with 'two-level'...

In the first contribution to the Symposium included in this volume on Future Productivity Growth in Canada, Thomas Wilson of the University of Toronto presents forecasts based on the FOCUS macroeconometric model of the Canadian economy. This model projects labour productivity growth to grow at...

Canada has operated both a federal value–added tax (the GST) and two variants of provincial VATs for the last 15 years. In addition, several provinces have continued to operate retail sales taxes similar to those in most US states. A brief review of experience around the world with...

In the third paper on taxation, Jack M. Mintz and Thomas A. Wilson consider the best way to allocate the “fiscal dividend”. This is the amount available to the government that can be used for tax cuts or expenditure increases within the framework of a balanced budget. In their view, although...