Canada's graduated personal income tax leads most taxpayers to expect higher tax rates when they are working than when they are living on lower incomes from their retirement savings. Yet for many people, marginal effective tax rates on income from retirement savings are higher than those they...

Governments are major employers, and usually provide defined-benefit (DB) pension plans with full inflation indexing and generous early retirement provisions. Hence, changes in thinking about, and accounting for, the costs of DB pension plans have major implications for government finances. Both...

In June 2012, the regulatory framework for a promising new retirement savings vehicle, Pooled Registered Pension Plans (PRPPs), was passed into Canadian federal legislation. The hope is that PRPPs will improve pension coverage and retirement-saving outcomes by reducing costs and improving...

Important changes are now underway to Canada Pension Plan “adjustment factors” that will increase the penalty for those who retire before age 65, and will raise the amount of additional CPP benefits available for those who delay retirement beyond 65. The new pension adjustment factors have...

Canada is in the happy position of being able to address its fiscal challenges not just through eliminating deficits, but also by promoting growth in the economy and the tax base. This report takes a two-pronged approach: first, an accelerated plan to achieve budgetary surplus in three years;...

Early 2020 presents Canada with two challenges: amenic economic growth, and nervousness about the federal government's fiscal stewardship. The C.D. Howe Institute's Shadow Federal Budget for 2020 addresses both. It contains a number of measures to improve the rewards from work, saving and...

The cost of federal employees has risen rapidly, with total compensation per employee jumping nearly 5% per year on average over the past decade, says a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Premium Compensation: The Ballooning Cost of Federal Government Employees,” authors Alexandre...

Younger Canadians are at a material risk of picking up the tab should the soon-to-be expanded Canada Pension Plan experience investment return shortfalls, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute report. In “Bigger CPP, Bigger Risks: What “Fully Funded” Expansion Means and Doesn't Mean,”...