Les auteurs s’intéressent aux finances fédérales et à la situation fiscale du Canada pour l’exercice en cours. Ils sont d’avis que le déficit budgétaire devrait diminuer de plus de 217 G$ pour s’établir à 137 G$, bien que les finances publiques n’aient pas encore été normalisées et que les Canadiens ne se soient pas encore remis de la pandémie.

Consulter le document »

The ongoing recovery from COVID has been stronger than many suspected and many emergency support programs have ended. Using the latest federal Fiscal Monitor data, we explore revenue and expense trends. We present a simple forecasting model to project revenue, expense and the federal deficit to the end of the fiscal year.

La Fondation canadienne de fiscalité fait paraître un nouveau numéro de la Revue fiscale canadienne, incluant une section thématique consacrée à l’impôt foncier des Premières nations.

Consulter le document »

• Grace Chow et Henry Shew, « Statute-Barred Date: Why Isn’t There Always One? », p. 687-743.
• Susann Sturm, « Income Tax Complexity Faced by Multinational Corporations: A Comparative Study of Canada, the United States, and Other Selected OECD Countries », p. 745-90.
• Audrey Boissonneault, « Analyse critique de l’impôt foncier sous le régime de la Loi sur la gestion financière des premières nations comme outil d’autonomie gouvernementale », version française p. 813-27 / version anglaise p. 799-812.
• André Le Dressay, « In Defence of the First Nations Fiscal Management Act », p. 829-33.
• Mike Icton et Devan Mescall, « Property Taxation: Establishing an Urban Reserve—Property Tax Challenges and Opportunities », p. 835-55.
• Kate McCue et Bill McCue, « Implementing the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation Property Tax System—Opportunities, Challenges, and Lessons Learned », p. 857-72.
• Ross Hickey, « First Nation Property Taxation and Governance in British Columbia », p. 873-87.
• Livio Di Matteo, « The Evolution of Health Expenditures in Canada, 1926-2019 », p. 889-920.
• Yan Xu et Zizheng Zhao, « China’s New Regime for Taxing Expatriate Income: Tightening the Screws or Vintage Wine in a New Bottle? », p. 953-79.
• Andrew Barton, Vinu Subramaniam et Paola Marino. « Impact of COVID-19 and Transfer Pricing: Approaches for Comparability Adjustments », p. 981-1001.
• Kim Brooks, Jinyan Li, Alan Macnaughton et al. (coéditeurs), « Current Tax Reading », p. 1003-25.

Le projet de loi 77, dont l’objectif est d’octroyer des privilèges aux municipalités sur les oléoducs et puits des compagnies pétrolières et gazières n’étant pas en mesure de payer leurs taxes municipales sera peu efficace compte tenu que les compagnies ne pouvant payer leurs taxes n’ont généralement plus d’actifs de valeur.

Consulter le document »

New Alberta legislation gives municipal governments the power to place liens on pipelines and wells of companies that fail to pay their assessed municipal taxes as part of the province’s struggle with orphan wells.

The intent is to induce bankrupt or non-paying companies to negotiate payment plans with municipalities for their unpaid taxes, Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver told the Legislature last month during second reading for Bill 77.

However, this plan is likely to be ineffective because of the connection between oil and gas companies’ unpaid municipal taxes and Alberta’s orphan well problem.

Cet article démontre que le Canada ressort comme un exportateur net en recherche et développement, mais comme un importateur net en matière de propriété intellectuelle en raison de ces difficultés à commercialiser, et non pas à générer, la propriété intellectuelle et que les gouvernements devraient agir autant en tant qu’acheteurs/investisseurs que par leurs politiques afin d’attirer les investisseurs étrangers.

Consulter le document »

There is an extensive, almost century-old, body of literature on Canada’s struggles with innovation and related systems. The constant thread is that there is no lack of good Canadian ideas, research, or access to intellectual property (IP). The failure, instead, stems from a lack of success in turning these ideas and IP, and the skills of Canadians, into commercial successes (see Council of Canadian Academies 2013, Nicholson 2016).

Part of this commercialization deficit is connected to Canada’s difficulty growing smaller businesses into larger ones. In turn, the relative dearth of vibrant mid-sized businesses has long been linked to lagging Canadian productivity and hence lagging average standards of living relative to comparators such as the United States (Baldwin et al. 2014).

To be sure, there are many sub-facets of this problem.

L’auteur constate que les perspectives annoncées par le minibudget du gouvernement du Québec sont meilleures que prévu, mais de nombreux défis demeurent.

Consulter le document »

Les perspectives annoncées par le minibudget du gouvernement du Québec sont meilleures que prévu, mais de nombreux défis demeurent. Le point sur la situation économique et financière du gouvernement du Québec de novembre dernier présente une perspective de croissance économique à court terme plus vigoureuse que celle du budget 2021-2022 présenté en mars 2021. Par conséquent, le gouvernement peut financer de nouvelles initiatives tout en présentant des déficits réduits pour les prochaines années, réduisant ainsi les obstacles à un retour à l’équilibre budgétaire.

L’auteur s’intéresse aux potentielles sources de conflit entre le gouvernement fédéral et les provinces canadiennes en 2022. Il relève que, bien que les transferts provinciaux et les programmes de support provenant d’Ottawa durant la pandémie aient représenté 5% du PIB des Canadiens en 2020, soit le taux le plus élevé de l’histoire du pays, nous ne sommes pas à l’abris de débats houleux en ce qui a trait au financement des soins de santé.

Consulter le document »

The soon-to-be two years of this pandemic represent one of the most intense periods of intergovernmental relations in Canadian history. There is little sign that things will ease in 2022. The pandemic is not over, and the discussions required to manage it in a decentralized federation like ours will continue. But even aside from the management of the pandemic, the Liberal minority government now faces a series of important challenges in its relationship with the provinces. While some of what lies ahead has been thrown at the government because of the financial repercussions of the pandemic, many core challenges to federal-provincial relations are of the Liberals’ own making and central pieces of their agenda.

Les auteurs présentent et analysent trois pistes de solution potentielles afin d’adapter le système des transferts fédéraux en matière de santé face au problème grandissant du vieillissement de la population et aux dépenses accrues causées par la pandémie de COVID-19.

Consulter le document »

The strains that the COVID-19 pandemic has placed on Canada’s health-care system, coupled with the premiers’ resultant calls for a massive expansionof the Canada Health Transfer (CHT), require improvements to health-care funding. This paper examines three potential pathways federal policy-makers could consider in drafting proposals for funding improvements. One option is to keep the status quo and preserve the CHT as it is. A second option involves incremental demographic adjustments to boost the CHT as populations age. Third, a joint federal-provincial-territorial taxation regime could be created which would transform the funding system, but could pose challenges to implement. These options offer policy-makers a means to take into consideration both citizens’ concerns about the health-care system and the demands of provincial and territorial governments. None of these pathways is mutually exclusive; they can be combined in various ways as well. Nor does any new policy need to focus solely on the CHT. Decision-makers should always be open to alternative policy designs. They also need to consider that the status quo is acceptable too, as provincial and territorial governments have the necessary taxation powers and fiscal ability to cover additional health-care costs, even with a projected increase in spending from 7.5 per cent of GDP in 2019 to 9.5 per cent by 2050.

L’auteur s’intéresse aux types de politique de financement en matière de santé au Canada afin d’améliorer la qualité des services hospitaliers et de mieux mettre en relation les différentes offres de services.

Consulter le document »

The federal government’s role in Canadian health-care funding policy has historically been a matter of writing cheques to the provinces and territories, leaving the nuts and bolts of funding policy for the provinces and territories to work out. Unfortunately, provinces and territories are stuck in policies from the past that have led to underperformance of their health care systems even as their health budgets continue to grow. There are opportunities for the federal government to remove some of provinces’ and territories’ barriers to adopting new policies for funding health care. Episode-based payments could help break down barriers between and within sectors and providers. Episode-based payments create financial incentives by aligning care providers across settings, with physicians potentially engaging in financial risk-sharing partnerships. The American example, led by U.S. Medicare insurance, suggests that the use of episode-based payments can work for certain conditions even in siloed and fragmented settings.

L’inflation n’aurait vraisemblablement pas d’impact sur l’exécution du plan de législation Build Back Better étant donné les retombées à long terme envisagées.

Consulter le document »

Critics of the House-passed Build Back Better (BBB) legislation have argued that the recent rise in inflation is a reason to forgo or scale back the legislation’s investments, which would cut poverty (especially among children), boost opportunity and productivity, advance racial equity, and fight climate change. This argument is misguided. BBB is unlikely to have any noticeable effect on inflation; more important, the long-term benefits from its investments are large while the risks of it generating inflation that the Federal Reserve cannot manage are small.

Ce rapport analyse la relation entre les variations apportées à la tarification du carbone, que cela soit par l’augmentation des taxes sur le carbone ou des crédits carbone, et le niveau de dioxyde de carbone produit par les diverses industries, incluant notamment l’industrie du transport et le résidentiel en concluant qu’une augmentation des taxes sur le carbone diminuerait les revenus du secteur de l’énergie électrique de 25% sur une période de 10 ans.

Consulter le document »

In this working paper, the Congressional Budget Office describes its recent update of parameters that characterize the relationship between emissions of carbon dioxide and changes in the price of those emissions. Based on a review of recent studies, CBO evaluated how a change in price induced by a tax or an allowance price on emissions would affect the amount of carbon dioxide released by the combustion of fossil fuels in the electric power sector, the transportation sector, and a composite sector that comprises the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors. In the electric power sector, price sensitivities of energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide over the first 10 years of a potential tax policy are about three times larger, on average—that is, more sensitive—in CBO’s current update than its previous (2010) estimates. In the transportation sector, 10-year average price sensitivities are about 25 percent smaller (that is, less sensitive) in the current update, and they are about the same in the composite sector. Totaled across all three sectors, the projected 10-year reduction in carbon dioxide emissions stemming from a tax on those emissions would be about twice as large as previously estimated, though the increased reductions in the electric power sector would account for nearly all of the additional reductions overall. Because emissions would decline by a larger amount than previously estimated, overall revenues from a prospective tax on energy-related emissions of carbon dioxide would be smaller. Revenues in the electric power sector would be about 25 percent lower over 10 years, but revenues in the transportation and composite sectors would be largely unchanged.

• Jane G. Gravelle, « Corporate Tax Reform: Issues for Congress », 3 décembre 2021, 70 p.
• Margot L. Crandall-Hollick, « The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in the House-Passed Build Back Better Act: Summary Table », 14 décembre 2021, 5 p.
• Molly F. Sherlock« Effective Marginal Tax Rates on EnergyRelated Capital Investments: Effects of the Investment Tax Credit and Accelerated Depreciation », 15 décembre 2021, 3 p.
• D. Andrew Austin, « The Debt Limit in 2021 », 27 décembre 2021, 5 p.
• Jane G. Gravelle, Donald J. Marples et Mark P. Keightley, « Corporate Income Taxation in a Global Economy », 4 janvier 2022, 23 p.
• Jane G. Gravelle, « Tax Havens: International Tax Avoidance and Evasion », 6 janvier 2022, 42 p.

L’économie américaine a changé en réaction à la Covid-19, ayant une incidence sur la mobilité tant au niveau des contraintes géographiques associées à l’emploi que par les réorientations de carrières, mais ces changements à la mobilité n’ont pas été traduits par des changements aux lois fiscales. Les États américains doivent donc désormais moderniser ces lois au moyen des huit réformes fiscales proposées dans cet article.

Consulter le document »

The post-pandemic economy will be characterized by greater mobility and new ways of living and doing business. States must take this opportunity to modernize their tax codes to reflect economic changes and to improve their competitive posture. Because the reality is that businesses that find their upward mobility constrained have more opportunities than ever to respond with geographic mobility.

Robust revenue growth puts states in a strong position to adopt meaningful tax reform; failing to do so could leave them at a competitive disadvantage compared to their more reform-minded peers.

Within individual income tax codes, states should consider adopting inflation indexing to avoid unlegislated tax increases; raising filing and withholding thresholds to avoid unduly burdening taxpayers who only spend a few days in a state; repealing convenience rules to eliminate the double taxation of remote workers; and replacing federal deductibility with more competitive rates.

Corporate income tax codes can be improved by meeting or exceeding the federal standard for the treatment of net operating loss provisions and repealing throwback and throwout rules.

States can reduce the penalization of business investment by repealing capital stock taxes and eliminating remaining inventory taxes.

Each of these reforms better positions states for success by making them more attractive for increasingly mobile employers and employees alike, and by responding to economic changes like higher inflation and the rise of remote work.

L’auteur discuter des changements apportés au modèle de microsimulation à grande échelle du Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center (TPC). Ce modèle permet de produire une estimation des impacts des politiques fiscales actuelles ou proposées sur les recettes fédérales, ainsi que de la répartition des charges fiscales en fonction du revenu aux États-Unis.

Consulter le document »

The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center (TPC) large-scale microsimulation model produces estimates of how current and proposed tax policies will affect federal revenues and the distribution of tax burdens by income. The model is similar to those used by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), and the Treasury’s Office of Tax Analysis (OTA). This year, TPC updated and revised its tax model in a variety of ways. In addition to incorporating new economic and budgetary projections published by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in January 2021, we implemented a new version of an algorithm to enable a streamlined update based on substantially revised CBO projections published in July 2021. We also incorporated major legislation enacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act of 2021 and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020. Those updates enabled our distributional analyses of tax proposals in President Biden’s fiscal year 2022 budget and various versions of the Build Back Better package, as well as a number of narrower proposals.

Ce rapport analyse l’influence des médias traditionnels sur l’efficacité des règles et des politiques fiscales et, ce faisant, conclut que la visibilité médiatique, celle-ci étant supérieure dans les pays avec des institutions fiscales bien établies, accroît le respect et l’efficacité de ces règles et politiques.

Consulter le document »

This paper provides a quantitative assessment on the impact of media reporting about fiscal rules and fiscal councils on the effectiveness of EU fiscal rules. Media visibility can contribute to more effective fiscal rules, since it can improve transparency, contribute to a more informed debate and act as an informal enforcement device for non-compliance, through reputational damage. Some international organisations take media visibility into account when assessing the strength of fiscal frameworks. However, the strength of media visibility has been based on expert judgement, which can provide a subjective and incomplete picture. The paper explores a novel media database of almost 300 million of articles maintained by the Commission, covering 27 EU Member States and the UK in 2004-2020. We analyse the media sources using a text mining approach, which has been applied frequently in the economic literature to assess the effects of media visibility on financial markets. The key findings can be summarised as follows: First, media reporting on fiscal rules appears to be more frequent in countries with well-developed fiscal institutions, but also during bad economic times or when the Commission releases its key fiscal policy news. Second, nationwide and influential media appear to report relatively more frequently on fiscal rules than regional media. References to fiscal rules in the media refer either to the need to keep public debt under control or to support growth and avoid austerity-related inequality, which reflects the existence of different views regarding the main objective of fiscal rules: fiscal sustainability vs. macroeconomic stabilisation. Third, panel regressions show that media visibility appear to have contributed to the effectiveness of EU fiscal rules, as measured by the stronger numerical compliance with these rules. Media from nationwide sources tend to be more effective than regional media. Finally, the creation of fiscal councils appears to have further increased the media reporting on fiscal rules.

Les auteurs s’intéressent au rôle potentiel des taxes d’accise dans la lutte contre l’obésité. Ils sont d’avis que même si la détermination d’une assiette fiscale pertinente, complète et administrativement faisable demeure un défi majeur, un argument prudent peut être fait en faveur de telles taxes dans des circonstances particulières.

Consulter le document »

Fighting the obesity epidemic has so far proven a difficult challenge, given the diversity of natural and processed foods, the complexity of food supply chains, and the fact that targeting excessive caloric consumption is far trickier than reducing overall consumption (as for tobacco). Nevertheless, efforts to curb caloric intake are gearing up and the experience from tobacco control has drawn much attention on a potential role for excise taxes in fighting obesity. Many related questions have therefore been raised as part of the IMF’s capacity development work: Should excises on unhealthy food be used to fight obesity? If so, under what conditions? What are the product and market characteristics that would help identify the relevant tax bases and the rates at which to tax them? While acknowledging that the scientific evidence keeps evolving, this note summarizes the ongoing debate and practice on food excises and on their potential role as a policy tool to fight the obesity epidemic, with a view to assist policymakers in deciding whether to go forward, and if so, how.

Bien que les responsables des politiques des pays du Conseil de coopération du Golfe (GCC) aient réagi rapidement afin de mitiger les impacts sanitaires et économiques du double choc de la pandémie et des prix du pétrole, des ajustements fiscaux sont nécessaires en raison de l’effet fragilisant de la dette publique.

Consulter le document »

GCC policymakers moved quickly to mitigate the health and economic impacts of twin COVID-19 and oil price shocks. Infection rates have declined across the GCC to well below previous peaks, though countries have experienced successive waves of the virus, and economic recoveries have begun to take hold. Nevertheless, GCC policymakers must navigate a challenging and uncertain landscape. The pandemic continues to cloud the global outlook as countries are in different phases of recovery, with varied growth prospects and policy space. As the COVID-19 crisis abates and economic recoveries are well-established, policies should address medium- and long-term challenges made more pressing by the pandemic: Fiscal policy should be geared toward achieving growth friendly consolidation with the aim to ensure long-term fiscal and external sustainability. To this end, priority should be given to strengthening fiscal frameworks, further mobilizing non-oil revenues, and increasing spending efficiency. With higher oil prices, procyclical spending should be avoided, and the windfall used to rebuild policy space.

Les pays qui se sont engagés, par le biais de l’Accord de Paris et des Objectifs de développement durable (ODD), à poursuivre des objectifs et des politiques climatiques limitant le réchauffement planétaire mondial, doivent concevoir des transferts budgétaires intergouvernementaux afin de soutenir les actions climatiques.

Consulter le document »

Countries have committed, through the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), to pursue climate targets and policies that would limit global temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. A shift toward green public investment will help to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In addition, substantial public investment will be necessary to build public infrastructure that makes economies more resilient to climate change and related natural disasters. Climate change mitigation and adaptation challenges thus compound preexisting needs for public investment to foster the economic recovery from the pandemic and to meet the SDGs in a broader range of areas, often in a context of limited fiscal space. Against this backdrop, a priority for all countries is to manage their public investment efficiently and effectively. To help countries improve the institutions and processes for infrastructure governance (the planning, allocation, and implementation of public investment), the IMF developed in 2015 the Public Investment Management Assessment (PIMA), which has already been applied in over 70 countries. However, the current PIMA does not provide a sufficiently tailored assessment of how public investment management can support climate change mitigation and adaptation. To fill this gap, this paper introduces a new module to the to the current Public Investment Management Assessment (PIMA) framework, the “Climate-PIMA” (C-PIMA), whose goal is to help governments identify potential improvements in public investment institutions and processes to build low-carbon and climate-resilient infrastructure.

Les auteurs s’intéressent au rôle des régulateurs financiers dans la transition vers une économie à faibles émissions de carbone. Selon eux, une action politique large et soutenue centrée sur la tarification du carbone est nécessaire.

Consulter le document »

There are demands on central banks and financial regulators to take on new responsibilities for supporting the transition to a low-carbon economy. Regulators can indeed facilitate the reorientation of financial flows necessary for the transition. But their powers should not be overestimated. Their diagnostic and policy toolkits are still in their infancy. They cannot (and should not) expand their mandate unilaterally. Taking on these new responsibilities can also have potential pitfalls and unintended consequences. Ultimately, financial regulators cannot deliver a low-carbon economy by themselves and should not risk being caught again in the role of ‘the only game in town.

Ce rapport examine une série d’options visant à réformer les cadres budgétaires existants, avec deux objectifs principaux en tête : premièrement, les rendre plus résistants aux crises futures, notamment à une éventuelle réintensification de la pandémie de COVID-19 au cours de l’hiver 2021-22 ; et deuxièmement, aider les gouvernements décentralisés à soutenir la reprise économique et sociale après la pandémie.

Consulter le document »

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a significant challenge for all tiers of government across the world. In the UK, the devolved governments of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are responsible for most of the public services significantly impacted by the pandemic, and have designed and implemented large parts of the public health response to it. They have also been responsible for designing and administering grants and property tax reliefs for businesses.

They have had to discharge these responsibilities and manage their budgets in the context of fiscal frameworks agreed before the pandemic – although the UK government made modest, but important, temporary changes to funding arrangements in 2020–21. These changes, in combination with the enormous increases in funding made available by the UK government, and the fairly symmetric impact of the pandemic across the four nations of the UK, meant the risk of a major funding crisis for the devolved governments was averted. But this ‘success’ does not mean there is not room for improvement to the existing fiscal frameworks in order to make them more robust to future shocks, or that the same ad hoc changes would necessarily be appropriate if another extreme adverse shock occurred.

This report considers a range of options to reform the existing fiscal frameworks, with two main objectives in mind: first, to make them more robust to future crises, including a potential reintensification of the COVID-19 pandemic during Winter 2021–22; and second, to help the devolved governments support economic and social recovery from the pandemic.

L’OBR présente ses commentaires sur les finances du secteur public du Royaume-Uni pour le mois de novembre 2021.

Consulter le document »

Budget deficit continues to fall sharply Government borrowing in November 2021 was £17.4 billion, down £4.9 billion on last November. Year to date borrowing of £136.0 billion is down 46 per cent on the same period last year and is £7.1 billion below our October forecast profile. That undershoot reflects stronger than expected receipts (thanks largely to a more resilient labour market) more than offsetting higher than expected spending.

Dans cette publication, l’OCDE aborde des règles détaillées pour la mise en œuvre d’une réforme historique du système fiscal international, qui fera en sorte que les entreprises multinationales (EMN) seront assujetties à un taux d’imposition minimum de 15 % à compter de 2023.

Consulter le document »

Une partie essentielle du projet BEPS de l’OCDE/G20 consiste à relever les défis fiscaux soulevés par la numérisation de l’économie. En octobre 2021, plus de 135 juridictions ont adopté un plan novateur visant à mettre à jour les éléments clés du système fiscal international qui n’est plus adapté à l’économie mondialisée et numérisée. Les règles globales anti-érosion de la base d’imposition (règles GloBE) sont un élément clé de ce plan et garantissent que les grandes entreprises multinationales paient un niveau minimum d’impôt sur les revenus générés dans chacune des juridictions où elles opèrent. Plus précisément, les règles GloBE prévoient un système d’imposition coordonné qui prélève un impôt complémentaire sur les bénéfices réalisés dans une juridiction lorsque le taux d’imposition effectif, déterminé sur une base juridictionnelle, est inférieur au taux minimum. Le présent rapport délimite le champ d’application et présente les dispositions opérationnelles et les définitions des règles GloBE. Ces règles ont vocation à être mises en œuvre dans le cadre d’une approche commune et à être introduites dans la législation nationale à partir de 2022.

Au Royaume-Uni, la Covid-19 aura des incidences néfastes sur les mesures relatives et absolues de la mobilité sociale, c’est-à-dire la propension de la jeune génération à mener un train de vie meilleur que celui de leurs parents en raison d’une réduction permanente de revenu potentiel. Face à ce constat, les décideurs politiques devraient donc agir en alignant de façon optimale les compétences requises sur le marché du travail avec la formation de la jeune génération.

Consulter le document »

Covid-19 has had a profound impact on the economic prospects of young people. This briefing note, which forms part of the Economy 2030 Inquiry, documents the unequal impact of economic shocks on the young and assesses what these mean for social mobility.  

Labour market conditions at the onset of one’s career have persistent effects over the course of the life cycle. Those entering the labour market in recessions have lower earnings than similar cohorts graduating in more prosperous times, and those who lose their jobs early in their career face wage penalties that persist until middle-age.  

This note documents how the adverse labour market shock caused by Covid-19 has disproportionately hit the young and, in many cases, hit those from the least-affluent backgrounds the most. These changes are compounded by declines in general psychiatric health among the young. In addition, school-age children and teens from the least affluent backgrounds are also more likely to have seen a parent lose employment since March 2020.  

The findings highlight the need for policies that are targeted towards the young and particularly towards policies that encourage social mobility and prevent the strengthening of the already strong link between ones’ economic origin and destination. 

La combinaison des avantages fiscaux spécifiques à la pension de retraite et de ceux découlant des dispositions fiscales générales peut donner une impression exagérée de l’étendue des avantages fiscaux liés à la retraite.

Consulter le document »

The Retirement Income Review (Callaghan) Report concluded that the Australian retirement income system is effective and sound and that its costs are broadly sustainable. This is on the assumption that those retirees who do have sufficient superannuation assets to achieve an ‘adequate’ living standard (which is an ‘income’ replacement rate of 65 to 75 percent), exhaust those assets by age 92. However, in retirement the vast majority of middle-income earners strive to preserve their ‘nest eggs’ and to make bequests, and so are projected to fail the ‘adequacy’ standard. The main contribution of this paper is to carefully analyse the estimates of tax concessions made by Treasury and TTPI. I show that both sets of estimates err by not relying on like-for-like comparisons between the factual—that is the tax treatment of superannuation as it stands—and the counterfactual, that is, the hypothesized, non-concessional, alternative which is used as a benchmark for measuring the extent of the superannuation tax concession. Specifically, while the estimates assume that superannuation earnings attract the benefits of dividend imputation and of discounted capital gains, those benefits are not included in the hypothetical alternative. The result is to vastly over-state the tax concessions that are specific to superannuation. Additionally, I justify an economic formulation of tax rates which better expresses the effective impact of taxes on behaviour and on welfare than the conventional legalistic formulation. This is applied to a scenario in which additional income is earned for the purpose of boosting the person’s superannuation account. Especially in relation to retired middle-income earners, the claim that the taxation of superannuation is unduly concessional turns out to be at best unproven, and so, as a result, that claim cannot properly be used to support further public policy interventions affecting the use of savings in retirement, nor for not increasing the rate of the Superannuation Guarantee Levy.

L’auteur s’intéresse aux politiques qui restreignent la capacité des collectivités locales à générer des revenus et à les réinvestir dans les services locaux en Australie. Selon lui, les politiques d’austérité budgétaire, tels que les plafonds budgétaires des conseils locaux, retardent ou empêchent l’expansion des infrastructures sociales et physiques qui aideraient à surmonter le reste de la pandémie.

Consulter le document »

Especially in times of crisis, governments have a responsibility to maintain and expand their provision of essential services and protections – for both economic and social reasons. This responsibility has never been clearer than during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Australians in all states count on their governments, at all levels, to play a leading role in rebuilding a stronger, healthy society in the aftermath of this unprecedented catastrophe. In Victoria, about 50,000 local government employees work in a wide range of different services and occupations, and their work is essential to the wellbeing of the communities they serve. Local government workers’ wages strengthen the financial situations of businesses and governments, through the taxes they pay and the consumer spending they undertake. Policies which restrict local governments’ ability to raise revenues and invest them in local services have negative effects on broader economic activity, and hence on revenue flowing back into government budgets. Rates on property are the largest single source of revenue to local governments in Victoria. Of total Victorian local government revenue in 2019-20 ($11.7 billion), rates accounted for $5.6 billion or almost half.