Should provincial business taxes be deductible under a federal profit tax? We show that the "optimal deductible," which neutralizes the vertical fiscal externality between the federal and provincial government, is the change in the federal tax base per dollar of tax revenue collected by the...

The authors model a firm that explores, develops, and extracts a depletable asset, taking into account various features of Canadian corporate and Ontario and Quebec mining tax law. They derive the user cost of capital and effective tax rate for investments undertaken by a mining firm....