Fossil fuel subsidies are of enormous import to policy-makers and public opinion, making it critical to properly define them. However, traditional methodologies tend to place subsidies in the realm of tax expenditure analysis, presenting a flawed picture. A recent report on government subsidies...

Oil price fluctuations, concerns over the division of resource revenues, and unconventional oil and gas developments are forcing governments to confront the same issue: how to design optimal royalty and corporate tax systems that bring in a publicly acceptable share of revenues without...

Canada lags behind many of its First World counterparts when it comes to business innovation, and urgently needs to improve its performance if it is to remain competitive and attractive to investment. The Expert Panel Report on Federal Support to Research and Development has recommended several...

The province of Ontario ended its most recent fiscal year with a $12 billion deficit and the Fraser Institute has calculated that the province is in worse financial shape than even the fiscally appalling state of California. One would think that a province so financially debilitated would want...

The Canadian personal income tax system does not pay much attention to whether the amount of money an individual brings home is supplemented by the income of a spouse or not. That means that families where one spouse earns more than the other get taxed at a higher rate than families where two...

For a government's fiscal program to best serve the public interest, while also ensuring sufficient public revenue collection, it has to meet three criteria: efficiency, simplicity and fairness. Unfortunately, the royalty and tax system currently in place for Saskatchewan's robust potash-mining...

For the first time since 1975 (the year Canada's marginal effective tax rates were first measured), Canada has become the most tax-competitive country among G-7 states with respect to taxation of capital investment. Even more remarkably, Canada accomplished this feat within a mere six years,...

This study adopts a new approach in assessing the impact of taxes on small business growth and suggests the need to consider new incentives that would be more effective in encouraging small business growth and would also improve the neutrality of the existing tax system

As the federal and provincial governments look to create jobs and attract business investment, productivity-enhanced business tax structures are in high order. Tax structures that combine internationally competitive tax rates on neutral tax bases foster long-term economic growth and generate...