Bulletin de veille du 8 octobre 2024

Québec/Canada

Ce texte présente un éclairage sur les postes vacants au deuxième trimestre de 2024. Le marché du travail passe de pénuries persistantes à un surplus de candidats.

Plusieurs données suggèrent que le marché du travail s’est considérablement détendu, tant au niveau de la baisse des postes vacants que de la faiblesse des embauches.

Au second trimestre de 2024, on comptait 126 050 postes vacants au Québec, marquant une baisse pour un huitième trimestre consécutif et atteignant son niveau le plus faible depuis le 1er trimestre de 2019 (125 175). Après avoir connu une hausse marquée avant et durant la pandémie, le nombre de postes que les employeurs cherchent à pourvoir diminue constamment depuis le deuxième trimestre de 2022 (baisse de 47,4 % depuis).

Le taux de postes vacants est désormais de 3,2 %, en nette baisse par rapport aux 6,0 % observés au 2e trimestre de 2022, revenant au niveau du 3e trimestre de 2018. Il glisse sous la moyenne canadienne (3,3%) pour une première fois depuis le 4e trimestre de 2018.

Depuis le sommet observé au 2e trimestre de 2022 au Québec, plus de la moitié (55 %) de la baisse des postes vacants est attribuable à trois secteurs d’activité :

  • Les services d’hébergement et de restauration (-25 090 postes; 22 % de la baisse totale)
  • Le commerce de détail (-19 405 postes ; 17 %)
  • La fabrication (-18 930 postes ; 16 %)

Le ratio entre le nombre de chômeurs et le nombre de postes vacants a grimpé depuis deux ans, passant de 0,8 au 2e trimestre de 2022 à 2,0 au 2e trimestre de 2024. Ce chiffre dépasse le niveau prépandémique (1,7 au 2e trimestre de 2019) et est supérieur à celui du trimestre précédent et de l’année précédente.

Ces données indiquent un relâchement considérable du marché du travail. Les employeurs semblent moins enclins à embaucher en raison du ralentissement économique, tandis que le nombre de candidats pour les postes disponibles augmente avec la hausse importante de la population.

Ce document analyse la faiblesse de l’investissement des entreprises au Canada entre 2001 et 2021, en mettant en avant une baisse significative de l’investissement dans les actifs liés à la productivité, comme les technologies de l’information et les produits de propriété intellectuelle, par rapport aux États-Unis, et propose des politiques pour stimuler l’innovation et accroître la compétitivité.

The Weakness of Corporate Investment in Canada, 2001-2021: Identification and Assessment finds that business investment in high-tech and innovative asset categories—crucial to raising living standards—has been significantly weaker in Canada than in the U.S. for the past 20 years, and the gap has grown larger since 2014.

Selon l’auteur de ce texte, le Québec offre un soutien financier moins généreux que la moyenne de l’OCDE pour les prestataires sans enfants, mais un soutien financier plus généreux que la moyenne de l’OCDE pour les prestataires avec enfants. Dans les deux cas, bien que le Québec se compare avantageusement avec le Canada, il se positionne loin derrière plusieurs États comparables comme la France, les Pays-Bas, l’Espagne et la Belgique.

Le projet de loi 71, qui prévoit une modernisation des programmes d’assistance sociale au Québec, a été déposé à l’Assemblée nationale le 11 septembre dernier.  

Ce projet de réforme vise notamment à créer un nouveau Programme d’aide financière de dernier recours regroupant les prestataires des programmes actuels d’aide sociale et de solidarité sociale et à remplacer les notions de « contraintes à l’emploi » par des notions de « contraintes de santé ». Il prévoit également que l’aide financière accordée sera versée individuellement à chaque membre adulte de la famille, plutôt qu’au ménage. Le projet de réforme ne prévoit pas de rehaussement significatif des prestations.

Selon une analyse publiée en 2023 par l’Observatoire québécois des inégalités, les programmes d’assistance sociale au Québec ne permettent pas à leurs prestataires de couvrir leurs besoins de base, tels que se loger, se nourrir et se vêtir. 

Mais qu’en est-il à l’extérieur du Québec? La présente analyse vise à comparer les prestations des programmes d’assistance sociale au Québec à celles des pays membres de l’OCDE.

Ce texte discute des nouvelles règles fiscales du budget canadien 2024 sur l’imposition des gains en capital, mettant en évidence l’iniquité créée par le calcul des gains sur une base nominale plutôt que réelle, notamment en raison de l’inflation, et suggère une réforme pour ajuster la base de coût des actifs à l’inflation.

The paper illustrates why Canada’s Budget 2024 tax rules do not treat the earners of capital gains uniformly or fairly, because of inflation. The effective tax rates on real capital gains vary substantially among taxpayers depending upon the holding period and the rate of return. Furthermore, capital gain taxes may even create real losses. Uniform inclusion rates applied to nominal capital gains poorly measure real capital gains and typically result in considerable underassessment or overassessment of actual capital gains income (i.e., improvement in purchasing power). An appropriate measure of capital gains should use a cost base adjusted
for inflation. 

États-Unis

Ce texte propose de mettre fin aux baisses d’impôts pour les ménages à hauts revenus instaurées par la loi fiscale de 2017 aux États-Unis et de lever davantage de recettes fiscales, principalement auprès des riches et des grandes entreprises, pour financer d’éventuelles prolongations de réductions d’impôts ou de nouveaux investissements publics.

Key provisions of the 2017 Trump tax law are scheduled to expire at the end of 2025. Given the law’s fundamental problems — its high cost, skew toward high-income people, and failure to produce the promised economic benefits — policymakers should take that opportunity to make a course correction in the nation’s revenue policies. This would mean adhering to three principles: ending the tax cuts for high-income households on schedule, raising more revenue, and making new investments that prioritize low- and moderate-income people and families.

This report examines the first two of those principles:

  1. Tax cuts for people making over $400,000 should end on schedule. Ending the 2017 law’s tax cuts for high-income households — the tax rate cuts, special deductions, and estate tax cuts on massive inheritances — would avoid fully 41 percent of the $3.9 trillion cost of extending the 2017 law over ten years (2026-2035).
  2. The tax system needs to raise more revenues to finance any tax-cut extensions or new investments. Policymakers need to raise more revenues from wealthy people and profitable corporations, such as by partially reversing the 2017 law’s corporate tax rate cut, to offset any tax cuts they choose to extend or expand for those with incomes below $400,000 and pay for other high-value investments they enact. Additional revenues can also improve our long-term fiscal outlook.

Ce texte explique comment les crédits d’impôt avec paiement direct, introduits par la loi sur la réduction de l’inflation (IRA), peuvent encourager les investissements dans les énergies propres dans les communautés à faible revenu en permettant aux entités exonérées d’impôts, telles que les gouvernements locaux et les organisations à but non lucratif, de bénéficier directement de ces crédits pour des projets d’énergie renouvelable.

Climate change and aging energy infrastructure disproportionately impact people with low incomes and people of color, who — due to myriad factors including redlining and other discriminatory systems — are likelier to live in communities where polluting industries are more prevalent and where investments to the public good have been lacking. Black and Hispanic people are exposed to 56 and 63 percent more air pollution than they create, respectively, and low-income households spend three times more of their income on utilities than do high-income households, making cost a more salient factor in their family budgets. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) created an innovative tax credit system known as direct pay that can help address pollution, under-investment, and cost by spurring major new investments in low-income communities that improve health and decrease energy costs while improving economic opportunity for local residents.

Ce rapport du CBO examine l’évolution du patrimoine familial entre 1989 et 2022 en utilisant une mesure du patrimoine qui inclut les prestations de sécurité sociale prévues. Au cours de cette période, le patrimoine familial a été inégalement réparti et les inégalités de patrimoine se sont accrues.

In this report, the Congressional Budget Office examines changes in the distribution of family wealth (a family’s assets minus its debts) from 1989 to 2022. Building on earlier work, CBO used an expanded measure of wealth that includes families’ projected Social Security retirement and disability benefits.

  • Total Wealth. Adjusted for inflation, the wealth held by families in the United States almost quadrupled between 1989 and 2022, rising from $52 trillion (in 2022 dollars) to $199 trillion, at an average rate of about 4 percent per year. In 2022, retirement assets and accrued Social Security benefits made up about 40 percent of wealth. Nonretirement financial assets, home equity, and other assets made up the rest.
  • Concentration of Wealth. Over that 33-year period, family wealth was unevenly distributed, and that inequality increased. In 2022, families in the top 10 percent of the distribution held 60 percent of all wealth, up from 56 percent in 1989, and families in the top 1 percent of the distribution held 27 percent, up from 23 percent in 1989. The share of wealth held by the rest of the families in the top half of the distribution shrank from 37 percent to 33 percent over the same period. Families in the bottom half of the distribution held 6 percent of all wealth in both 1989 and 2022.
  • Value of Accrued Social Security Wealth. In 2022, accrued Social Security wealth accounted for 20 percent of families’ total wealth—up from 17 percent in 1989. Together, defined contribution and defined benefit pension plans accounted for a similar share, 21 percent. Throughout the period, Social Security wealth accounted for a larger portion of assets among families who had less wealth.
  • Changes in Wealth During the Coronavirus Pandemic. From 2019 to 2022, total family wealth increased by 17 percent, from $170 trillion to $199 trillion (in 2022 dollars), and median family wealth increased by 8 percent, from $466,500 to $504,000. Wealth inequality changed little during the pandemic: Throughout that period, the share of wealth held by families in the top 1 percent of the distribution remained at 27 percent.
  • Differences From CBO’s Previous Studies of Family Wealth. In 2016, CBO published a report that defined family wealth as a family’s marketable wealth—that is, its easily tradable assets minus its debts—and in 2022, CBO published a report that defined family wealth as the sum of a family’s marketable wealth and its promised income from defined benefit pension plans. This report updates those prior analyses with more recent data and expands the measure of wealth to account for future streams of income from Social Security benefits.

Ce texte explore les leçons à tirer des réformes des systèmes de retraite à l’étranger, en mettant l’accent sur l’importance de réformes structurelles dans des pays comme l’Australie, la Suède et le Chili, afin d’assurer la viabilité des retraites à long terme, notamment en favorisant les comptes individuels de retraite financés par des cotisations obligatoires.

By 2035, the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance Trust Fund, or the Social Security Trust Fund, will be depleted, and current payroll taxes will only be able to fund 83 percent of the scheduled benefits.

Absent any reforms, Social Security recipients would immediately face a 17 percent cut in benefits.

Past reform efforts, such as the 1983 amendments, have not been able to solve Social Security’s long-term funding problem, which is due to a declining worker-per-retiree ratio that now stands at only 3-to-1 and is projected to fall further.

Reforms such as using price indexing instead of wage indexing to calculate benefits, raising the retirement age, using the chained CPI to adjust benefits for inflation, and raising the payroll tax cap would restore solvency to the system.

The current Social Security system crowds out private saving and harms young workers and new entrants to the labor force.

Policymakers should look to other countries for inspiration, including Australia, Singapore, Sweden, and Chile, which have all reformed their systems to encourage personal saving.

Ce texte explique comment les modèles de taux d’imposition effectifs du Tax Policy Center ont été ajustés pour inclure les actifs incorporels, tels que les brevets et les dépenses en recherche et développement (R&D), et examine l’impact des crédits d’impôt pour la R&D et du régime de revenus d’actifs incorporels provenant de l’étranger (FDII) sur les taux d’imposition moyens et marginaux aux États-Unis.

Intangible assets, such as patents and research and development spending, represent an increasingly large fraction of investment in the economy. In this paper, we review the historic tax treatment of research and development and intangibles in the US and their economic significance. We update Tax Policy Center effective tax rate models by incorporating the capitalization of research and development, the research and experimentation tax credit, and the foreign-derived intangible income deduction. We show how these policies impact effective average and marginal tax rates and shape investment incentives for intangibles.

International

Ce document analyse l’impact économique de l’incertitude liée aux politiques fiscales, en utilisant une base de données mondiale nouvellement créée, et montre que cette incertitude réduit la production industrielle et augmente les coûts d’emprunt souverains, affectant les économies avancées et émergentes de manière similaire, tout en ayant des répercussions sur les marchés financiers mondiaux.

Fiscal policy uncertainty (FPU)—ambiguity in government spending and tax plans, as well as in public debt valuation—is widely regarded as a source of economic and financial disruptions. However, assessing its impact has so far been limited to a few large economies. In this paper, we construct a novel database of news-based fiscal policy uncertainty for 189 countries. Importantly, we track fiscal uncertainty events that generate global attention that we refer to as the “global fiscal policy uncertainty. » This uncertainty has contractionary effects, reducing industrial production in both advanced and emerging market economies, with impacts greater than country-specific fiscal policy uncertainty. Additionally, global fiscal policy uncertainty raises sovereign borrowing costs and generates synchronous movements in the global financial variables, even after accounting for US monetary policy shocks.

Ce texte examine les distorsions économiques et les inefficacités causées par la conception actuelle de l’impôt sur les gains en capital au Royaume-Uni, proposant une réforme pour uniformiser les taux d’imposition des gains et des revenus afin de réduire les inégalités fiscales et encourager une réallocation plus productive du capital.

1. Capital gains tax (CGT) raises around £15 billion per year, less than 2% of total tax revenue. Revenues have risen significantly over time and are forecast to rise further, partly reflecting the increasing role of wealth accumulation in the UK economy. 

2. CGT is paid by around 350,000 people (0.65% of the adult population). 3% of CGT taxpayers realised gains of more than £1 million and this group accounted for two-thirds of CGT revenue. The average gain among this group of 12,000 people (0.02% of the adult population) was £4 million. Around half of taxable gains relate to unlisted shares in private businesses. 

3. CGT rates vary across assets. They are lower than tax rates on earned income and, in most cases, income from capital. These rate differentials are unfair and create a range of undesirable distortions. 

4. The design of the tax base is flawed. Ultimately, by discouraging saving, investment and risk-taking and distorting who holds assets and for how long, it reduces productivity and well-being. 

5. Higher rates of CGT would worsen these problems caused by the tax base. But keeping tax rates low cannot solve those problems. There is a strong case for reform.

6. The tax base could be reformed so that CGT does little to discourage saving and investment. This requires giving more generous deductions for purchase costs and losses. There are several ways to do this in practice. 

7. Ultimately, we advocate aligning marginal tax rates across all forms of gains and income, while reforming the tax base. Tax rates could be aligned at any level; for example, rates on capital gains (and capital income) could be increased while rates on employment income were reduced. In practice, the ‘big-picture’ solution we set out would include substantially higher CGT rates. 

8. Higher CGT rates would increase the incentive for people to leave the UK before realising gains to avoid UK CGT. One option to address this would be to tax people emigrating from the UK on their accrued but unrealised gains, whilst exempting new arrivals from UK CGT on gains they made whilst living abroad. There are challenges with this approach, but it is operated by some other countries. 

9. Steps could be taken towards a better-designed system. Low CGT rates on business assets are poorly targeted at entrepreneurship. They lead to more money being held in companies, but do not achieve the commonly stated policy goal of increasing owner-managers’ investment in their own businesses. Business asset disposal relief should be scrapped in favour of more generous deductions for investment costs. Removing CGT uplift (or ‘forgiveness’) at death should also be a priority.

10. The government should seek to make reform credibly lasting. It should set out clear principles and a rationale for reform and commit to the new regime for the length of the parliament. Instability and unpredictability are bad for investment.

Dans ce texte, les auteurs constatent que la pauvreté relative des enfants a augmenté au Royaume-Uni et tentent de cibler quels sont les enfants les plus susceptibles d’être touchés et quelles politiques permettraient de réduire le plus efficacement possible la pauvreté des enfants.

  1. The poverty rate is a useful summary measure of how low-income families are faring, comparing their total household income with a specified poverty line. For example, a couple with no children would need to have household income below £17,100 to be classed as living in relative poverty in 2022–23. For a couple with two young children, the relative poverty line would be £23,900 as they are judged to require a higher household income to maintain a similar standard of living.
  2. Relative child poverty stands at 30% (4.3 million children). Under Labour governments from 1997–98 to 2010–11, during which there was a policy focus on reducing child poverty, the relative poverty rate for children decreased from 33% (4.2 million children) to 27% (3.6 million children). Half of that decline was reversed from 2010–11 to 2022–23. The child poverty rate is highest among families with three or more children, and almost all of the rise in child poverty over the 2010s was concentrated in this group. Children of lone parents, those in rented accommodation, and those in workless households are all also more likely to be in poverty, though the child poverty rate in working families increased from 18% in 2010–11 to 23% in 2022–23.
  3. Overall, the benefits system provides less support for low-income households with children now than it did in 2010. Though rates of support for families with children are still much higher in real terms than in 1997, the below-inflation uprating of many benefits from 2011 to 2019 made the system less generous. Various other policies, such as the two-child limit, removal of the family premium, the household benefit cap, and cuts to housing support, have also substantially reduced the incomes of affected families. As a result of the first three of these reforms, a typical social renting out-of-work lone parent with three young children has seen their disposable annual income cut by £4,000, or a fifth, relative to what it would have been had these reforms not been implemented.
  4. The government has a number of levers it can pull through the benefits system if it wants to reduce child poverty. Among the policies we consider, the single most cost-effective policy for reducing the number of children living below the poverty line is removing the two-child limit. This would cost £2.5 billion a year but would reduce child poverty by 540,000 (4 percentage points) in the long run, equating to an annual cost of around £4,500 per child lifted out of poverty. This compares to removing the household benefit cap, which would reduce child poverty by 10,000 at an annual cost of around £47,000 per child, or increasing LHA rates to the 50th percentile of local rents, which would reduce child poverty by 40,000 at an annual cost of £11,000 per child.
  5. The poverty rate, while a useful summary measure of how those on low incomes are faring, is based on an arbitrarily drawn poverty line, and does not tell us everything about the impact of reforms on the living standards of children in low-income families. For example, whilst removing the two-child limit would lift large numbers out of poverty, many of the children deepest in poverty would benefit less if the household benefit cap remained in place, and households already capped would not gain at all. Removing the household benefit cap alone would lift very few (10,000 children) above the poverty line but would significantly alleviate the depth of poverty faced by some of the poorest children and provide a bigger proportional boost to their incomes. When designing its child poverty strategy, the government should therefore consider effects of policies across the distribution of incomes, not just around the poverty line. 
  6. Labour market policies present another lever the government may pull to reduce child poverty, though they will necessarily be less well targeted. The government has highly ambitious plans to increase the employment rate to 80%, which could reduce child poverty by 200,000 to 350,000 if achieved – though hitting that goal will be much easier said than done. Or it could increase the minimum wage. But neither increases in the minimum wage nor widespread increases in employment are likely to be well targeted at low-income households or to give large income gains to those who do benefit.

Dans ce rapport, l’OCDE note une inversion de la tendance en matière réformes fiscales, ce qui se traduit par une diminution relative des réductions de taux et des mesures de réduction de l’assiette fiscale constatées au cours des dernières années au profit d’augmentations de taux et d’initiatives d’élargissement de l’assiette pour la plupart des types d’impôts.

This is the ninth edition of Tax Policy Reforms: OECD and Selected Partner Economies, an annual publication that provides comparative information on tax reforms across countries and tracks tax policy developments over time. The report covers the tax policy reforms introduced or announced in 2023 in 90 member jurisdictions of the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting, including all OECD countries. The publication provides an overview of the macroeconomic environment and tax revenue context in which these tax reforms were made, highlighting how governments used tax policy to respond to elevated inflation levels, as well as to address long-run structural challenges.

Ce document évalue les pratiques du gouvernement du Canada en matière de budgétisation verte par rapport au Cadre de budgétisation verte de l’OCDE et les pratiques de pointe des pays membres de l’OCDE. Il met l’accent sur les efforts déployés par le Canada pour améliorer ses rapports sur les dépenses supplémentaires dans le budget fédéral qui sont attribuables aux objectifs climatiques et environnementaux, ainsi que pour renforcer le recours à la budgétisation verte parallèlement à d’autres initiatives budgétaires stratégiques au sein du gouvernement fédéral.

Le document est organisé en trois sections; (1) un examen de la mise en œuvre de la budgétisation verte au gouvernement fédéral fondé sur le Cadre de budgétisation verte de l’OCDE, (2) les conclusions d’une analyse sur les possibilités d’amélioration de la budgétisation verte dans le processus budgétaire fédéral et (3) les conclusions d’une analyse des cadres multiples et transversaux qui sont pertinents pour les rapports budgétaires au Canada. Au cours du projet, l’OCDE a accordé une attention particulière aux objectifs de la Loi canadienne sur la responsabilité en matière de carboneutralité (LCRMC), du Cadre pour la qualité de vie, du Cadre des résultats relatifs aux genres, y compris l’outil d’analyse comparative entre les sexes Plus (ACS Plus), et de la Directive du Cabinet de 2024 sur l’évaluation environnementale et économique stratégique (EEES) et de son outil d’appui, l’Optique de climat, de nature et d’économie.

Ce court texte aborde l’importance de renforcer le cadre fiscal du Royaume-Uni pour assurer une gestion économique stable et durable, en mettant l’accent sur l’impact des politiques budgétaires à long terme.

Although the Chancellor said she would stick with the previous Government’s much-criticised rule of reducing public debt in the fifth year of the forecast, Rachel Reeves’s conference speech has sparked a debate about whether the fiscal rules should be changed to allow the Government to borrow more. Three options have been mooted for changing the definition of debt: to include the Bank of England; to exclude the Government’s National Wealth Fund and GB Energy; or to broaden the concept to include a wider range of assets, targeting either public-sector net worth (PSNW) or public-sector net financial liabilities (PSNFL).

Much of the debate has focused on the idea that a change to the rules would mean room to borrow around £50 billion more in five years’ time. But such a focus on how much borrowing any new rules might ‘allow’ misses the point that it’s the decision about the fiscal policy that sets the rules, not the other way around. This means any change in the rules should be seen as the Government signalling that it wants to take a different approach to fiscal policy. A decision to move to a PSNW or PSNFL target, then, should be taken as the Government wanting to do more public investment than set out in its manifesto. Such an approach would address £26 billion in previous cuts to public investment and would resonate with the Government’s ‘mission’ to address the UK’s long-standing problem of weak growth. In that context, we have previously recommended that the UK Government should adopt a PSNW target and, of the options being discussed, this would be the one that incentivises governments to create public value for this and future generations by recognising that public investment will create assets. But adopting a PSNW target would need to be done carefully in order to address the practical issues associated with including assets in the fiscal targets and to make clear the Government remains commitment to sustainable public finances.

Ce texte analyse les compromis auxquels sont confrontés les décideurs lorsqu’ils conçoivent des régimes fiscaux simplifiés pour les petites entreprises en Afrique subsaharienne, en mettant en évidence l’impact des taux d’imposition, des seuils d’exemption et de l’administration fiscale sur la collecte de revenus, l’équité et la simplicité.

This paper provides novel evidence of the trade-offs policy makers face when designing simplified tax regimes for small businesses. First, it provides a comprehensive stocktaking of the main features of these regimes across Sub-Saharan Africa: they are adopted by two-thirds of countries, but their design varies greatly. Second, it draws on administrative and survey data for a thorough examination of a specific simplified tax regime. This analysis shows most small businesses lack knowledge about design features, such as the existence of a minimum exemption threshold, but they react strongly to increases in tax rates by lowering their declared turnover. Finally, the paper presents the results of an experiment that encourages taxpayers to pay fixed amounts—a potential alternative design of a simplified tax regime that aims for a better balance of the trade-offs facing policy-makers. The findings show that providing simple guidance about how much small businesses with similar characteristics typically pay in taxes can increase revenue, but this reduces equity among taxpayers.

Ce document étudie l’impact des politiques de transparence sur les actifs financiers transfrontaliers.

Excessive financial secrecy facilitates illicit financial flows, including via anonymous ownership of cross-border financial assets. We study the reaction of such investment to recent increases in financial transparency using a new dataset of financial secrecy for 2011-2019. We find that investors reacted by relocating their assets to jurisdictions that remain, or have recently become, relatively more financially secretive than other countries. These effects are highly non-linear and stronger for assets originating from lower-income countries. Our results suggest that recent advances in information exchange are toothless if not accompanied by improved information collection and full corporate beneficial ownership transparency.

Équipe de rédaction

Recherche et sélection des articles :

  • Alyson Auger-Collette
  • Mirlyn-Daphney Brutus
  • Kristine Javier
  • Louis Lemay

Coordination et édition :

  • Tommy Gagné-Dubé
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