In “Damage Control: Options for Reforming the Land Transfer Tax in Manitoba,” authors Bev Dahlby and Jack Mintz examine the land transfer tax in Manitoba and consider three options for its reform. “Compared to other Canadian cities, the land transfer tax in Winnipeg for a property sold at...

Governments, including Canada’s, offer tax benefits to small businesses, such as lower rates, in the belief that these benefits encourage growth, but these attempts can easily have the opposite effect. Small businesses that face steep “tax walls,” meaning a sudden and sharp increase in tax...

To put it in simple terms, Canada’s corporate income tax is a mess. It discourages capital investment most heavily in many service sectors, is highly distortionary and overwhelmingly complex, impeding economic growth. With current inflation rates, these distortions are even larger. With so...

This paper analyses whether a global unitary taxation approach to corporate income tax (CIT) can improve the ability of governments to design and administer efficient and effective tax and royalty policies for the extractive industries. Drawing upon experience with unitary approaches to...

Canada's financial system made it through the 2008 global financial crisis better than many other economies did, but Canadian regulators nonetheless hastened to introduce a spate of new regulations to increase financial stability. However, all new regulations create effects, intended and...

Alberta's new royalty regime has made the province a more rewarding place for anyone looking to invest in conventional non-renewable resources. After Alberta's NDP government commissioned a review of the royalty regime to ensure the province was receiving its “fair share,” it ended up...

In the past two weeks, Senate and House Republicans have put forward parallel mark-up bills in a step toward reform of the U.S. personal and corporate tax systems. The respective bills titled, “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” (TCJA) are based on previous proposals put forward by Congressional...

Big businesses start small. With the proposed Republican tax reform announced on September 28th, small business taxes will be dropped sharply making it attractive for start-up companies to locate and grow in the U.S.This is in sharp contrast to the recent debate in Canada whereby small...

This paper analyzes Alberta's fiscal problem in terms of the size of the current deficits and the growth trajectory of the debt. We endeavor to put the province's fiscal problem in terms to which people can relate. In addition to analyzing the scale of the problem, the paper will consider some...

On September 6th, 2014, members of the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta elected Jim Prentice as leader of their party, and Premier of Alberta.The School of Public Policy assembled its key thinkers in economic, taxation, energy and natural resource policy to provide unsolicited but...