Bulletin de veille du 18 juin 2019

Québec/Canada

La lutte contre les changements climatiques implique d’aller au-delà des mesures axées sur la demande (ex. taxation du carbone) et de mettre en place des mesures visant à réduire la production de combustibles fossiles ainsi qu’à transitionner vers une énergie propre.
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This report assesses the climate policy progress of Canadian governments over the past two years with respect to long-term greenhouse gas emission reductions. The report identifies growing threats to climate policy progress in Canada and concludes that positive progress in provinces like British Columbia and Quebec over the past few years is outweighed by backsliding in other provinces. The new governments in Alberta and Ontario—Canada’s two biggest carbon polluters—have reversed the climate policies of previous governments, which puts Canada’s already-unlikely national targets even further at risk.

This study was co-published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces to Respond to Climate Change research program (ACW).

Le Québec utilise une part plus importante de ses ressources que la plupart des autres provinces canadiennes et des pays de l’OCDE afin de financer les missions de l’État. Toutefois, la situation financière du Québec s’est améliorée, notamment en regard de son endettement.
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Le Panorama des finances publiques du Québec regroupe différents indicateurs portant notamment sur les revenus, les dépenses, le solde et la dette des administrations publiques. La situation québécoise des finances publiques s’y voit comparée à l’échelle canadienne et à l’international.

Dans un premier temps les résultats des opérations du gouvernement fédéral et du Québec sont présentés. Sous cet angle, l’analyse s’intéresse aux sources de revenus de ces ordres de gouvernement, à l’utilisation des fonds amassés, à l’atteinte de l’équilibre budgétaire et à l’évolution de leur niveau d’endettement.

Le gouvernement du Québec dégage des excédents budgétaires depuis 2015‑2016 et le niveau de sa dette nette est en réduction constante depuis 2012‑2013. En contrepartie, le fédéral malgré un niveau de dépense relativement plus faible qu’au cours des années 1980 présente des soldes budgétaires déficitaires depuis 2015‑2016. La dette nette fédérale demeure néanmoins stable autour de 36 % depuis 2008.

La section suivante reprend une partie de ces analyses, cette fois pour le gouvernement du Québec et celui des autres provinces canadiennes. D’une part, on y montre les niveaux de revenus et de dépenses élevés du Québec par rapport à celles-ci. D’autre part, le Québec présente le solde budgétaire excédentaire le plus important parmi les provinces canadiennes au 31 mars 2018.

La troisième section trace un portrait « territorial » des finances publiques. Plusieurs ordres gouvernementaux interviennent souvent dans la desserte de services et mènent des activités de redistribution sur un territoire donné. L’utilisation de regroupements cumulant les opérations de ces acteurs permet de produire des comparaisons internationales.

Globalement, l’analyse montre que le Québec, par rapport à plusieurs juridictions, utilise une part plus importante de ses ressources afin de financer les missions de l’État, dont l’importance en proportion du PIB est relativement élevée. Par contre, celle-ci révèle également que la situation financière du Québec s’est améliorée, notamment en regard de son endettement.

Un outil interactif est également mis à votre disposition pour vous permettre de sélectionner les variables qui vous intéressent et de visualiser des données personnalisées.

Une tarification supplémentaire du carbone passant de 6 $ la tonne en 2023 à 52 $ la tonne en 2030 serait nécessaire – en plus des frais fédéraux de 50 $ la tonne de carburant – pour atteindre la cible d’émissions de GES du Canada en vertu de l’Accord de Paris.
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Le présent rapport fournit une estimation de la tarification supplémentaire du carbone qui serait nécessaire pour atteindre la cible d’émissions de gaz à effet de serre (GES) du Canada en 2030 en vertu de l’Accord de Paris, ainsi qu’une estimation de son effet sur l’économie canadienne.

La portée de ce rapport est limitée. Par exemple, le rapport n’évalue pas les mérites politiques de la tarification du carbone ou des approches alternatives pour réduire les émissions de GES; le rapport ne tente pas non plus de prendre en compte les coûts économiques et environnementaux des changements climatiques.

Alors que le poids de la dette publique ne cesse de diminuer, la dette des ménages – et particulièrement de la classe moyenne – explose au Canada.
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Selon les données de la Banque des règlements internationaux (BRI), la dette mondiale aurait augmenté de presque 50 points de pourcentage depuis 2001, pour atteindre un sommet historique de 245 % du PIB mondial au premier trimestre de 2018. En dollar US, c’est l’équivalent de plus de 120 billions $ de nouvelles dettes qui devront être assumées par les générations futures. Nous l’avons vu dans la fiche précédente, ce sont les économies avancées qui ont connu la plus forte croissance des dettes privées avant la crise financière de 2008‑2009, puis de celle des dettes publiques dans la foulée de la Grande Récession qui a suivi. Malheureusement, la baisse des taux d’intérêt et le retour de la croissance n’ayant pas suffi à réduire significativement le ratio de la dette globale, la situation est aujourd’hui pire que celle d’il y a dix ans.

Le plan du nouveau gouvernement de l’Ontario est voué à l’échec si ce dernier continue d’avoir recours à une augmentation des revenus et non à une réduction des dépenses pour équilibrer le budget.
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This study analyzes the first budget of the new Progressive Conservative government in Ontario, tabled in early April 2019, to assess the extent to which it reflects either a fundamental shift in fiscal policy from the policies of the Ford government’s predecessors, or continuity with the fiscal policies of the McGuinty and Wynne governments.

Although the new budget does represent a policy change from the final years of the Wynne government, its fiscal policy approach is decidedly similar to that which prevailed under the McGuinty and Wynne governments in the period following the 2008/09 recession.

Despite large budget deficits, both the 2011 and 2019 budgets called for continued nominal spending growth with the hope that faster revenue growth would lead to gradual deficit reduction over time.

Given similar spending trajectories and revenue outlooks, the two budgets also forecasted similar rates of gradual deficit reduction and therefore a lengthy period of deficit spending.

Another point of similarity between the 2019 budget and those of the Ford government’s predecessors is its reliance on elevated tax rates to finance government activities.

One important difference between the two budges is that Budget 2019 projects less debt accumulation than the post-recession McGuinty and Wynn budgets, largely due to lower infrastructure spending. While Budget 2011 called for a 4.9 percentage point increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio over a three-year period, Budget 2019 plans to reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio by 1.6 percentage points by 2023/24. However, these reductions in capital spending are back-loaded, and might conflict with other initiatives, including the potential uploading of some assets and responsibilities of the Toronto Transit Commission and new subway extensions. While lower capital spending might help reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio, it is not yet clear whether that will projection come to pass.

Le « jour de libération fiscale », soit le moment de l’année où les contribuables ont gagné suffisamment de revenus pour couvrir l’ensemble de leurs obligations fiscales, est le 14 juin au Canada cette année. Au Québec, c’est plutôt le 28 juin, soit 2 jours plus tôt que l’an dernier.
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  • In 2019, the average Canadian family will earn $117,731 in income and pay an estimated $52,675 in total taxes (44.7 %).
  • If the average Canadian family had to pay its taxes up front, it would have worked until June 13 to pay the $52,675 total tax bill imposed on it by all three levels of government (federal, provincial, and local).
  • This means that Tax Freedom Day, the day in the year when the average Canadian family has earned enough money to pay the taxes imposed on it, falls on June 14.
  • Tax Freedom Day in 2019 comes one day earlier than in 2018, when it fell on June 15. This decline is due to the expectation that the incomes of Canadians will increase more than the total tax revenue forecasted by Canadian governments.
  • Tax Freedom Day for each province varies according to the extent of the provincially levied tax burden. The earliest provincial Tax Freedom Day falls on May 27 in Alberta, while the latest falls on July 2 in Newfoundland & Labrador.
  • If governments increased taxes to balance their budgets instead of financing expenditures with deficits (which are deferred taxes), Tax Freedom Day would arrive 8 days later. Put differently, the Balanced-Budget Tax Freedom Day arrives on June 22

États-Unis

La diminution du taux d’imposition des petites entreprises aux États-Unis a un effet négligeable sur la création d’emplois.
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Cutting state personal income taxes doesn’t promote small business growth and job creation. More likely, it will impede entrepreneurship by taking resources away from education and other public investments key to a strong economy.

L’assouplissement des règles d’accès au crédit d’impôt sur le revenu gagné pour les jeunes travailleurs américains, tel que proposé par le Working Families Tax Relief Act, réduirait la pauvreté.
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Since enactment of the 1986 Tax Reform Act, federal income tax parameters have been designed to ensure that federal income and payroll taxes don’t tax people into, or deeper into, poverty, with one glaring exception — low-income childless adults. Today, more than 5 million workers aged 19‑67 are taxed into or deeper into poverty by federal taxes. The main reason is that the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for this group is much too small (and for some, isn’t available at all) to offset the income taxes and employee share of payroll taxes that they must pay.

A number of members of the House and Senate have introduced legislation in this Congress that would make major progress in addressing this problem by substantially expanding the EITC for workers not raising children in their homes. The proposals would reduce poverty among these workers while improving their well-being and strengthening the incentives for jobless individuals who aren’t raising children to enter the labor force.

For example, the Working Families Tax Relief Act, introduced by Senators Sherrod Brown, Michael Bennet, Richard Durbin, and Ron Wyden, as well as by Representatives Dan Kildee and Dwight Evans in the House, would boost the maximum EITC for childless adults from about $530 today to $2,070, raise the income limit at which single individuals no longer qualify for the credit from about $16,000 to about $25,000, and expand the ages at which individuals can be eligible for this credit from 25-64 to 19-67 (except for full-time students aged 19‑24, who would remain ineligible because their parents can claim many of them for the larger EITC for families with children). These changes would reduce the number of workers aged 19‑67 (other than full-time students) whom the federal tax code taxes into, or deeper into, poverty to close to zero — from 5.51 million today to less than 100,000, a reduction of about 99 percent.

Réforme du crédit d’impôt pour revenu gagné aux États-Unis: le crédit maximum serait déterminé indépendamment du nombre d’enfants du ménage et accorderait le montant maximal aux étudiants et aux aidants à faible revenu.
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The cost-of-living refund (CLR), a proposal from the Economic Security Project, would revise the current earned income tax credit (EITC) by increasing benefits for many people, expanding eligibility for the credit, and paying the credit in advance via monthly payments. The proposal would provide up to $4,000 annually to single workers and $8,000 for married couples. Benefits would phase in more rapidly than under the current EITC and would begin to phase out at higher income levels. Some caregivers and low-income students would be eligible, even with little or no earnings. All workers ages 18 and up would be eligible. On average, the 68 million recipients of the CLR who receive higher CLR benefits than EITC benefits would receive an additional benefit of about $3,430. For the 4 million people would receive a CLR, but their CLR benefits would be less than their current EITC benefits, we describe a way to augment or “patch” the CLR to avoid benefit reductions. The CLR proposal would cost about $2.5 trillion over a 10-year budget window. Patching the CLR with a separate credit for single parents with at least two children would cost an additional $131 billion and represents one way to keep total benefits for families at least as high under the CLR as under the current EITC.

Les dépenses fiscales des États-Unis seront réduites d’environ 1,3 % du PIB entre 2019 et 2025 et de 0,8 % du PIB en 2027 en raison de la réforme fiscale.
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This paper provides estimates of the total cost of and distributional effects of nonbusiness tax expenditures claimed on individual tax returns after enactment of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, taking account of interactions among provisions. The nonbusiness tax expenditures will reduce tax liability by $1.2 trillion in 2019, about 5 percent more than the sum of the costs of the separate provisions. Tax expenditures, on average, reduce taxes as a share of income more for upper-income than for lower-income taxpayers. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act reduced the total cost of tax expenditures and made their distribution among income groups slightly less unequal.

Bien que le crédit d’impôt pour revenu gagné ait réussi à augmenter les revenus des familles à faible revenu aux États-Unis, il fait l’objet de plusieurs critiques, notamment pour son manque de soutien pour les travailleurs sans enfants.
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The earned income tax credit provides substantial assistance to low- and moderate-income workers. Benefits tilt heavily to families with children. Prompted in part by the success of the credit and in part by shortcomings in the credit, policymakers, advocates, and analysts have offered up reform proposals. In this report, we describe the credit’s current effects and then analyze the credit’s basic elements (its eligibility requirements, design, timing, administration, and effects on other programs including State EITCs and transfer programs) to help guide thinking on these potential reforms.

International

Un « impôt corporatif Z », comportant des changements en matière d’imposition des surplus, de l’encaisse et des dépenses comblerait les lacunes de l’impôt sur le revenu des sociétés australiennes.
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This paper proposes a method to improve the cash flow corporate tax and in particular to make it better applicable to financial corporations. This takes the S-CFCT – which is a tax on net flows to shareholders – proposed by the 1978 Meade Committee a step further and allows us to tax ‘pure profits’ on debt as well as equity. The other adjustment is to avoid negative tax receipts when cash flows are net inward and replace these with a rebate, which is adjusted upwards over time. The rebate offsets tax when it falls due. This also provides a mechanism to deal with corporations which accumulate cash and don’t distribute, which is a serious issue for the S-CFCT. I call this the corporate Z-tax as it mimics the mechanism provided under the personal Z-tax (as described in Working Paper 6/2019).

La zone de libre-échange continentale africaine devrait viser l’ensemble des lignes tarifaires plutôt que 90 % seulement afin de permettre aux pays membres de tirer pleinement parti des avantages de libre-échange.
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In March 2018, representatives of member countries of the African Union signed the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement. This agreement provides a framework for trade liberalization in goods and services and is expected to eventually cover all African countries. Using a multi-country, multi-sector general equilibrium model based on Costinot and Rodriguez-Clare (2014), we estimate the welfare effects of the AfCFTA for 45 countries in Africa. Three different model specifications—comprising both perfect competition and monopolistic competition—are used. Simulations include full elimination of import tariffs and partial but substantial reduction in non-tariff barriers (NTBs). Results reveal significant potential welfare gains from trade liberalization in Africa. As intra-regional import tariffs in the continent are already low, the bulk of these gains come from lowering NTBs. Overall gains for the continent are broadly similar under the three model specifications used, with considerable variation of potential welfare gains across countries in all model structures.

Le revenu médian des ménages a stagné en 2017-2018 au Royaume-Uni et la croissance des bénéfices des employés est inférieure à l’inflation pour cette même année.
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This chapter analyses trends in average incomes and income inequality between UK individuals. We also explore the determinants of trends in income growth and how they have evolved over time, on average and for different groups. We use the Households Below Average Income (HBAI) data, the latest version of which covers the financial year 2017‑18, to document these trends in recent years. For the analysis of the labour market, we supplement our HBAI analysis with the Labour Force Survey (LFS). To understand the pattern of income growth in recent years, we analyse how different sources of income, including earnings from employment and state benefits and tax credits, have contributed to changes in total income. We focus on changes in living standards and inequality that have (or have not) occurred over the last year (since 2016‑17) as well as changes since the Great Recession (i.e. since 2007‑08) and the recovery period (since 2011‑12).

Les auteurs proposent un régime où seules deux taxes sont en vigueur : une formule d’imposition ciblant à la fois les particuliers et les corporations ainsi qu’une taxe de vente.
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Complicated taxation systems do not only lead to a significant increase in administrative costs for all parties involved, but they can also lead to unjustified tax exemptions and loopholes.

This paper introduces a concept for a simple progressive taxation system, which enables citizens, the economy and the state to save significant amounts of money by decreasing the time invested in administering the taxation process.

Utiliser de façon transparente les recettes fiscales attribuables à la taxation du carbone pour la diminution de l’impôt des particuliers ou pour l’environnement rallie le support des contribuables.
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The paper collects comprehensive and detailed data on what 40 OECD and G20 economies do with the revenues from carbon taxes, emissions trading systems, and excise taxes on energy use. It notes that constraints – which can take the form of political commitments or legal earmarks – on revenue use differ between carbon taxes, emissions trading systems, and excise taxes. Constraints are less common for excise taxes, which also raise the most revenue. Carbon tax revenues are relatively often associated with environmental tax reforms, involving reductions in personal or corporate income taxes. Revenues from emissions trading systems are frequently directed towards green spending. The results may be relevant to the political economy of ambitious carbon pricing schemes in the sense that the political expedience of choices on revenue use may depend on the amount of revenue raised.

La taxation basée sur le principe d’utilisateur-payeur permet de financer les dépenses liées aux externalités de l’utilisation des routes et incite à transitionner vers des modes de transport moins polluants.
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This paper discusses the main external costs related to road transport and the design of taxes to manage them. It provides an overview of evolving tax practice in the European Union and the United States and identifies opportunities for better alignment of transport taxes with external costs. There is considerable scope for improving transport tax practice, notably by increasing the use of taxes based on road use. Distance charges offer great promise in delivering more efficient road transport. In heavily congested areas, targeted charges are a cost-effective way of reducing congestion. Fiscal objectives provide an impetus for change as improving vehicle fuel efficiency and fleet penetration of alternative fuel vehicles erode traditional tax bases, particularly those relating to fossil fuel use. A gradual shift from an energy-based approach towards distance-based transport taxes has the potential to establish a stable tax base in the road transport sector in the long run.

Équipe de rédaction

Recherche et sélection des articles :

  • Olivier Gauthier-Durette
  • Josianne Picard
  • François Servant-Millette
  • Gerry Vittoratos
  • Olivia Wu

Coordination et édition :

  • Tommy Gagné-Dubé
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