With Toronto City Council due to discuss an increase in the land transfer tax (LTT) on highend homes at an upcoming meeting, this independent analysis of the impacts of such a move is intended to help inform the deliberations. In this E-Brief, we evaluate the economic cost of raising LTT...

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...

We study corporate income tax competition when firms operating in multiple jurisdictions can shift income using financial planning strategies. Several such strategies, particularly intra-corporate lending, appear to be actively pursued by companies to reduce subnational corporate taxes in...

Investors frequently hold equity in tax-exempt savings vehicles such as pension plans, despite the prediction of the standard model that they hold only bonds. We provide a new explanation for this empirical puzzle based on differences between pensions and taxable assets in the tax treatment of...

The recent increase in cross-border flows of foreign direct investment has sharpened the research focus on multinational taxation. In this book, taxation experts Jack Mintz and Alfons Weichenrieder examine how multinational corporations use indirect financing structures—organizing themselves...

The World Health Organization has advocated the earmarking of health-related taxes to mobilize revenues to be spent on public health spending. While there are certain advantages and disadvantages in the use of earmarked taxes to fund healthcare, its ability to mobilize revenues will depend on...