Bulletin de veille du 28 janvier 2025

Québec/Canada

Ce document souligne les enjeux relatifs à l’Énoncé économique de l’automne 2024 qui pourraient intéresser les parlementaires.

Comme le directeur parlementaire du budget (DPB) l’a estimé l’année dernière, le déficit budgétaire du gouvernement pour 2023-2024 a été plus important que ce qu’indiquait le budget de 2024.

Compte tenu du contexte mondial incertain et volatil, les scénarios économiques du gouvernement minimisent les risques.

Les hypothèses démographiques qui sous-tendent les projections économiques de l’Énoncé économique de l’automne ne sont pas transparentes et sont probablement incompatibles avec la politique actuelle du gouvernement.

Les dépenses liées aux passifs éventuels continuent d’augmenter et constituent une source croissante de risque budgétaire.

La capacité de la fonction publique à produire des Comptes publics de qualité en temps opportun diminue.

Cette note estime les recettes qui seraient perdues si la taxe sur les produits et services (TPS) était supprimée des dépenses liées aux funérailles, que ce soit dans le cadre de la taxe de vente harmonisée (TVH) ou séparément. 

L’exonération des produits et services funéraires de la taxe sur les produits et services (TPS) a suscité l’intérêt des parlementaires. Ce changement de politique a été proposé dans le projet de loi C-397 (44e législature, 1re session).

La présente note estime les recettes qui seraient perdues si la TPS était supprimée des dépenses liées aux funérailles, que ce soit dans le cadre de la taxe de vente harmonisée (TVH) ou séparément. L’estimation des coûts repose sur l’hypothèse que la modification à la politique serait entrée en vigueur le 1er janvier 2025.

Les produits et les services qui auraient été détaxés en vertu du projet de loi C-397 n’avaient pas été déterminés à la fin de la session parlementaire. Par conséquent, le directeur parlementaire du budget (DPB) a calculé le manque à gagner en recettes fiscales en s’appuyant sur les frais funéraires de base.

Selon le DPB, le coût total de cette mesure s’élèverait à 679 millions de dollars pour les exercices financiers 2024-2025 à 2028-2029.

Ce texte souligne que l’incertitude liée au changement du taux d’imposition du gain en capital empêche les contribuables de prendre des décisions fiscales éclairées. Les auteurs proposent que le gouvernement abandonne ou reporte les modifications proposées à l’année fiscale 2025.

The federal government’s proposed increase to the capital gains inclusion rate has created a nightmarish scenario for taxpayers. The Canada Revenue Agency has been administering the changes since June 25, 2024, as though the proposal is law, even though the government failed to enact the proposal into legislation before Parliament was prorogued. With the likelihood of a spring election, taxpayers face a choice: pay at the higher rate now and struggle to recoup overpayments if the measure dies, or follow existing law and risk interest and penalties should it eventually pass. The proposed rules affect not only individuals with large gains but also trusts, corporations, and nonresidents, creating complex reporting requirements under an uncertain legal framework. Software updates, tax slips, and filing instructions are already being tailored to legislation that does not yet exist. This administrative limbo erodes public confidence in the tax system, as taxpayers and tax preparers struggle with a rule that might never be legally enacted. The government should abandon the proposed increase. If it will not, it should delay the effective date to at least January 1, 2025, to spare taxpayers the gamble of filing 2024 returns under a measure that may never pass. This deferral would reduce needless compliance costs. If the government insists on retroactive application, the CRA should provide relief by waiving interest and penalties for taxpayers who file under current rules. Canadians deserve a predictable tax system, not one that forces them to hedge bets on unpassed legislation.

Ce rapport évalue la performance fiscale des premiers ministres canadiens (huit actuels et deux anciens) jusqu’à l’année fiscale 2023/24 sur la base d’une série de critères qui incluent les dépenses publiques, les impôts, la dette et les déficits.

Overall, the premiers ranked (of 10) and scored (of 100), as follows: 1st Blaine Higgs,* NB (71.5) 2nd Heather Stefanson,* MB (64.3) 3rd Danielle Smith, AB (63.7) 4th Doug Ford, ON (59.7) 5th Dennis King, PE (56.2) 6th Tim Houston, NS (55.7) 7th Scott Moe, SK (54.2) 8th François Legault, QC (54.0) 9th David Eby, BC (54.0) 10th Andrew Furey, NL (34.9) * indicates former premier. In regards to government spending, Premier Eby ranked highest (with a score of 95.5) ahead of Stefanson (85.4) and Ford (72.8). Meanwhile, four premiers failed to achieve a score above 50: King (47.6), Houston (42.3), Legault (33.3), and Smith (10.9). For taxes, Premier Smith led the pack by some margin (with a score of 80.2). Meanwhile, Atlantic premiers besides Premier Higgs scored the lowest: King (37.5), Houston (36.9), and Furey (35.0). On debt and deficits, Premier Smith again ranked highest (scoring 100.0) followed by Premier Higgs (99.6). However, three premiers failed to achieve a score above 50: Stefanson (44.7), Furey (14.5), and Eby (3.1).

États-Unis

Dans ce court texte, l’auteure évalue que les républicains de la Chambre des représentants seraient en train d’examiner une liste de réductions potentielles totalisant plus de 5 000 milliards de dollars au cours de la prochaine décennie.

Next year, nearly all of the individual provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) will expire unless Congress acts. Congressional scorekeepers have estimated that fully extending the TCJA would cost $4.6 trillion over ten years. The Tax Policy Center has shown that, on average, all income groups would get a tax cut relative to current law, but higher-income households would receive a larger benefit. 

But it is important for policymakers to understand more than the average impact of TCJA extensions, especially as they consider changes to specific provisions of the 2017 law. Below we unpack how extending each of the TCJA’s major provisions would affect taxpayers in different income groups. The key takeaway is that specific provisions of the TCJA have very different distributional effects depending on a household’s income level.

The TCJA was a sweeping piece of legislation that made major temporary changes to many individual tax provisions, including reducing marginal tax rates, expanding the standard deduction, expanding the child tax credit, modifying the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and introducing a new deduction for businesses organized as pass-through entities (199A). It raised taxes by repealing personal exemptions and limiting itemized deductions.

Selon les projections du Congressional Budget Office (CBO), le déficit du budget fédéral s’élève à 1 900 milliards de dollars cette année, et la dette fédérale atteint 118 % du PIB en 2035. La croissance économique ralentit et l’inflation diminue au cours des deux prochaines années; ces deux phénomènes restent modérés après 2026.

The Congressional Budget Office regularly publishes reports presenting its baseline projections of what the federal budget and the economy would look like in the current year and over the next 10 years if laws governing taxes and spending generally remained unchanged. This report is the latest in that series, presented in an abbreviated version to facilitate work on other Congressional priorities. The budget projections are based on CBO’s economic forecast, which reflects developments in the economy as of December 4, 2024. They also incorporate legislation enacted through January 6, 2025.

Dans ce document, le Congressional Budget Office (CBO) examine les tendances des recettes et des dépenses liées à l’assurance chômage et fournit des informations sur la manière dont le CBO traite ce programme dans ses projections de base et ses estimations de coûts.

The Unemployment Insurance (UI) system provides temporary weekly benefits to qualified workers who are unemployed through no fault of their own. The system is run jointly by the states and the federal government.

  • The states administer the system under federal laws and regulations, set regular benefit amounts, specify eligibility requirements, and distribute benefit payments.
  • The federal government sets broad guidelines for the system, pays a portion of states’ administrative costs, and advances funds to states if they lack the money to pay benefits promptly.

Funding for UI is drawn from payroll taxes levied primarily on employers (by state governments and by the federal government).

Benefit payments and tax receipts flow through the Unemployment Trust Fund (UTF) in the U.S. Treasury and are considered federal spending and revenues. That fund directly links revenues and distributions for the permanently authorized unemployment programs. Each state has an account in the UTF. States can accumulate balances during periods of low unemployment, draw down those balances when benefit expenditures exceed tax receipts, and borrow from the federal government when balances are insufficient to cover benefits.

Dans cette étude, les auteurs s’intéressent aux mécanismes utilisés au Nebraska pour limiter les hausses d’impôts fonciers et, plus spécifiquement, à une nouvelle loi (Loi 34) qui introduit une véritable limite de prélèvement.

Nebraskans have witnessed a flurry of activity in recent years as policymakers have sought to check the growth of homeowners’ tax bills. Property tax credits, truth in taxation laws, a proposed property tax (and other tax) repeal measure, a gubernatorial proposal to backfill a substantial share of existing property tax burdens, and ultimately the 2024 special session’s adoption of legislation expanding property tax offsets and capping increases in property tax burdens are just the highlights of property tax relief efforts in recent years.

And yet for homeowners, very little seems to have changed, at least up through the 2024 special session. Despite the new laws, property tax bills kept rising.

In many respects, this is unsurprising. Property taxes are rising in communities across the country as jurisdictions frequently fail to—and are often under no obligation to—reduce millages (rates) in response to soaring property values. Nebraska is not an outlier in this regard. What distinguishes Nebraska, however, is its starting point as a state that already features high property taxes, as well as the insufficiency of prior legislative efforts to tackle the problem.

Since 2020, the average Nebraska home price has risen 23 percent in real (inflation-adjusted) terms, compared to 25 percent nationally. Higher property taxes driven by soaring home values are a national challenge, not one specific to Nebraska, but while these sharp increases are new everywhere, they stand out even more in Nebraska after many years of home price increases that trailed national averages. From 2000 to late 2019, Nebraska home prices rose 14 percent in real terms, just over a third of the increase nationwide. Since 2020, those increases have much more closely tracked national averages—in a state with an effective rate of 1.44 percent on owner-occupied property, compared to 0.91 percent nationwide.

Dans ce document, les auteurs discutent d’une mesure, le Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT), et des manières de l’étendre pour financer l’assurance-maladie aux États-Unis.

The Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT) is a 3.8 percent surtax on a portion of income above certain thresholds. Congress enacted the NIIT in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, an amendment to the Affordable Care Act. The NIIT partly mirrors the payroll taxes used to fund Medicare’s Hospital Insurance trust fund, also assessed at a 3.8 percent rate above an income threshold. In this brief, we describe the NIIT and the context for the NIIT in Medicare financing and taxing of households with higher incomes. We describe historical data on revenues generated by the NIIT. We also discuss two recent policy proposals that seek to expand the NIIT and redirect the revenue to the Hospital Insurance trust fund, as opposed to the general revenues that support Supplemental Medical Insurance within Medicare and other government programs. Finally, we discuss some pros and cons of raising additional revenue through the NIIT through the lens of five public financing principles.

International

Ce rapport expose que les politiques fiscales dans les pays exportateurs de matières premières sont affectées par des cycles économiques et des chocs de volatilité, ce qui nuit à la croissance. Les auteurs estiment que l’adoption de règles fiscales et de politiques structurelles pourrait réduire cette volatilité et stimuler la croissance économique.

Over the past few decades, fiscal policy has been about 30 percent more procyclical and about 40 percent more volatile in commodity-exporting emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) than in other EMDEs. Both procyclicality and volatility of fiscal policy—which share some underlying drivers—hurt economic growth because they amplify business cycles. Structural policies, including exchange rate flexibility and the easing of restrictions on international financial transactions, can help reduce both fiscal procyclicality and fiscal volatility. By adopting average advanced economy policies on exchange rate regimes, restrictions on cross-border financial flows, and the use of fiscal rules, commodity-exporting EMDEs can increase their gross domestic product per capita growth by about 1 percentage point every four to five years through the reduction in fiscal policy volatility. Such policies should be supported by sustainable, well-designed, and stability-oriented fiscal institutions that can help build buffers during commodity price booms to prepare for any subsequent slump in prices. A strong commitment to fiscal discipline is critical for these institutions to be effective in achieving their objectives.

Ce document discute des programmes de résidence et de citoyenneté par investissement, en se concentrant sur leur utilisation potentielle en lien avec l’évasion fiscale ainsi que sur les motivations des pays qui les proposent.

This paper discusses under what circumstances residence and citizenship by investment (RBI or CBI) schemes could be used by individuals engaging in tax avoidance or evasion. It describes the market for CBI and RBI and how features of the offered programs might reveal the underlying motivations of governments offering them. The paper then presents empirical evidence on the conditions under which such schemes are offered. Finally, the paper estimates the impact of such schemes on investment, house prices, and public revenues.

Cette étude analyse les incitatifs fiscaux comme outils de politique industrielle au Mozambique. Elle souligne la nécessité d’une révision stratégique, puisque les incitatifs utilisés engendrent des pertes de recettes significatives.

This paper analyzes the use of tax policy as industrial policy in Mozambique. Despite significant foregone tax revenue due to industrial policy in the form of tax incentives, the effectiveness of Mozambique’s tax policy remains questionable due to insufficient data and unclear public policy strategy. Through an examination of macro data, tax reports, and data from World Bank Enterprise Surveys, the note underscores the need for a thorough reassessment of existing tax measures. It advocates for a more strategic, targeted and evidence-based design of tax incentives that deliver on industrial policy goals.

Ce document analyse comment des lois bien conçues renforcent la gouvernance fiscale en équilibrant les pouvoirs administratifs et les droits des contribuables.

Well-functioning tax systems anchor their governance arrangements in law. This paper develops an analytical framework from which the core legal principles for sound tax governance can be derived to inform the design of countries’ legal frameworks for administration and tax procedure. It then applies this analytical framework to derive key legal features that should be embedded in laws for tax administration—including additional considerations for semi-autonomous revenue authorities— and tax procedure, to ensure a balance between tax administration powers and adequate taxpayer protections.

Dans une analyse approfondie des données fiscales de plus de 34 000 multinationales opérant en Slovaquie, il est démontré que l’introduction, en 2024, d’un impôt minimum global de 15 % pourrait réduire significativement le transfert de bénéfices vers les paradis fiscaux, augmentant ainsi les recettes fiscales des juridictions concernées.

We develop a methodology to decompose the tax revenue impact of the global minimum tax introduced in 2024 into several components and quantify its potential impact on profit shifting. We apply it to 34 thousand multinational-country observations from tax returns, financial statements and country-by-country reports of all multinationals active in Slovakia. We find that the global minimum tax has the potential to decrease profit shifting by most multinationals, which are on average likely to pay higher effective tax rates in most countries worldwide post-reform. We find that Slovak corporate tax revenues will increase by 4%, with half of the increase due to its minimum top-up taxes. The other half of the increase is corporate income tax on profits that will no longer be shifted out of the country. We expect the global minimum tax to target 49% of previously shifted profits.

Cette étude révèle que, à la suite d’une réforme anti-évasion fiscale ciblant les Îles Caïmans, les employés demeurés dans le paradis fiscal ont bénéficié d’une augmentation salariale de 8 %, tandis que les nouvelles recrues, souvent sous contrat temporaire, ont perçu en moyenne 30 % de moins que leurs prédécesseurs. Les auteurs soulignent ainsi l’impact des politiques fiscales visant l’évasion fiscale sur le marché du travail local dans les paradis fiscaux.

This paper offers the first detailed characterization of the labor market in a tax paradise and the first assessment of how a reform aimed at discouraging tax avoidance affected workers. We show that incumbents were highly educated, performed specialized tasks, and benefited from a wage gap, particularly at the top. Immediately after the reform announcement, several workers exited. Stayers experienced wage increases of around 8% and a higher probability of working for several firms simultaneously. New hires earned, on average, 30% less than incumbents, frequently on temporary contracts. The results offer insights into policies promoting economic substance in low-tax jurisdictions.

Ce rapport illustre que, devant la mondialisation des systèmes financiers, l’échange automatique de renseignements fiscaux (adopté par plus de 170 juridictions) se révèle essentiel pour lutter contre l’évasion fiscale. Ce mécanisme a déjà permis de collecter près de 130 milliards d’euros tout en renforçant la coopération internationale pour garantir la justice fiscale.

La norme EAR prévoit l’échange automatique d’un ensemble prédéfini de renseignements sur les comptes financiers entre les autorités fiscales sur une base annuelle afin de les aider à s’assurer que le montant correct de l’impôt est payé. Pour garantir la pleine efficacité de la norme, le Forum mondial examine les cadres juridiques nationaux et internationaux de chaque juridiction afin de s’assurer qu’ils sont complets, ainsi que l’efficacité de la mise en œuvre de la norme dans la pratique.

Ce rapport précise que les règles GloBE du projet OCDE/G20 offrent aux juridictions membres un cadre harmonisé pour déclarer et répartir les impôts complémentaires.  Devant les défis fiscaux engendrés par la numérisation de l’économie, ces règles renforcent la transparence fiscale mondiale et favorisent une coopération internationale accrue.

The GloBE Information Return sets out a standardised information return to facilitate compliance with and administration of the GloBE Rules. The GIR was released by the Inclusive Framework on BEPS in July 2023. This version incorporates clarifications on how to complete the GIR and reflects the Administrative Guidance released in December 2023 and June 2024. This version also includes a template that could be used to notify jurisdictions that they will receive the GIR through exchange of information.

Équipe de rédaction

Recherche et sélection des articles :

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

Coordination et édition :

  • Tommy Gagné-Dubé

Note: L’intelligence artificielle générative a été utilisée dans la préparation de ce bulletin de veille pour la préparation de certaines des phrases résumées (en gras) des documents. 

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