Les auteurs notent une baisse prononcée dans les dépenses d’investissement au Canada lorsque l’économie canadienne est marquée par l’incertitude, auquelle s’ajoute une baisse lorsqu’il y a incertitude du côté de l’économie américaine.
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Nous développons une mesure de l’incertitude macroéconomique canadienne, basée sur la méthodologie proposée par Jurado, Ludvigson et Ng (2015) et utilisant la base de données canadienne développée par FortinGagnon et collab. (2019). Nous montrons que, dans l’ensemble, l’incertitude macroéconomique canadienne est corrélée avec sa contrepartie américaine mais qu’elle affiche toutefois des comportements distincts de celle-ci durant certains épisodes spécifiques de l’histoire macroéconomique récente, notamment la période de forte volatilité dans le prix du pétrole entre 2014 et 2015. Nous utilisons notre mesure pour identifier les effets dynamiques des chocs d’incertitude sur l’activité macroéconomique canadienne. Cette analyse démontre qu’une hausse de l’incertitude canadienne cause une baisse prononcée et persistante dans les dépenses d’investissement au Canada. Cet effet est distinct et s’ajoute à celui également négatif – causé par une hausse de l’incertitude américaine.

L’utilisation au Canada des règles de dépouillement des bénéfices, proposées par l’OCDE, contribuerait à corriger une anomalie de notre régime fiscal qui permet de déduire du revenu une dépense d’intérêt engagée en vue de générer un revenu non imposable, tout en freinant l’érosion fiscale.
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Les planifications qui exploitent les différences dans les règles fiscales entre pays en vue de minimiser la charge d’impôt globale des multinationales font l’objet de multiples dénonciations.

Parmi les techniques de planification utilisées, l’érosion de la base d’imposition par le recours à la dépense d’intérêt constitue une pratique préoccupante. L’Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques (OCDE) a d’ailleurs émis des propositions visant à les encadrer.

Ces propositions sont à certains égards plus contraignantes que les règles fiscales canadiennes en place, car elles visent l’ensemble de la dette des entités membres des groupes de multinationales et non seulement la partie de la dette empruntée auprès de parties liées.

Le Canada est le seul pays du G7 à ne pas encore avoir adopté de mesures s’inspirant de la proposition de l’OCDE. Toutefois, dans le cadre de la dernière campagne électorale, le parti Libéral a promis de donner suite à ces recommandations. Ces mesures auraient d’ailleurs un impact significatif sur les recettes fiscales fédérales, haussant celles-ci de 1,5 milliard les premières années suivant leur implantation, selon les estimations effectuées par le Directeur parlementaire du budget.

Ce court texte propose un rappel des règles actuelles en matière de déductibilité de l’intérêt en contexte international, une description des propositions de l’OCDE à cet égard ainsi que quelques implications liées à l’éventuelle application de ces recommandations.

La Banque du Canada ne devrait pas ajouter le maintien de la stabilité financière du pays à ses mandats puisque qu’elle n’a pas ultimement le contrôle sur cet aspect de l’économie canadienne.
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The Bank of Canada’s current mandate should not be expanded to include financial stability, says a new report from the C.D. Howe Institute.

In “The Bank of Canada and Financial Stability: A New Mandate?,” authors Michael D. Bordo and Pierre L. Siklos marshal historical and empirical evidence to make the case that the Bank of Canada should not confuse the public by adding the burden of meeting a goal—financial stability—it cannot reasonably achieve on its own.

L’élimination de la prime salariale, soit l’écart positif en faveur des travailleurs du secteur public par rapport à ceux du secteur privé en Alberta, permettrait au gouvernement d’économiser environ 800 M$.
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Are public sector workers in Alberta over paid? Or are they perhaps just the target of resentment from private sector workers, many of whom have lost their jobs and incomes in the past few years as the energy sector has shed thousands of positions? This communique summarizes the main results in Mueller (2019) concerning the size of the public sector wage premium, which is the percentage difference between the earnings of workers in the public and private sectors. To determine whether there is public sector wage premium and its size, it is necessary to compare the wages and salaries of public sector workers with private sector workers with similar characteristics, such as education and age, and that work in industries that overlap both the private and public sectors. The Mueller study uses state-of-the-art econometric techniques and data on individuals’ earnings from Statistics Canada’s Labour Force Survey from January 2006 to December 2017. The database for Alberta contains 678,563 hourly wage observations over the 12‑year period.

Le chapitre 11 du Rapport du vérificateur général du Québec propose un suivi des prévisions du rapport préélectoral 2018. L’écart de revenus s’explique notamment par une hausse de 857 M$ des impôts des sociétés (+10,3 %).
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L’année 2018-2019 s’est soldée par un surplus beaucoup plus important que prévu. Selon les Comptes publics 2018-2019, le surplus a été de 8,3 milliards de dollars, alors qu’il avait été estimé à 1,9 milliard dans le rapport préélectoral 2018. Il s’agit d’un écart de 6,4 milliards. Cet écart provient de revenus plus élevés que prévu de 4,2 milliards, soit une hausse de 4 %, et de dépenses moins élevées que prévu de 2,2 milliards, soit une baisse de 2 %.

Plusieurs facteurs expliquent cet écart, dont une croissance économique soutenue, une augmentation plus forte que prévu des revenus des entreprises du gouvernement, des délais de réalisation de certains projets et des décisions subséquentes à la publication du rapport préélectoral, comme l’accélération du remboursement de la dette.

À la lumière de ces résultats, le ministère des Finances devra poursuivre ses travaux de suivi de certains des constats que nous avons formulés dans le cadre de nos travaux visant à évaluer l’efficacité et la rigueur du processus budgétaire du gouvernement, et ainsi améliorer la qualité des prévisions.

Les politiciens aux États-Unis parlent du déficit et des dettes comme d’un phénomène à surveiller, mais continuent de proposer des baisses d’impôt.
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In recent years, U.S. fiscal policy has been historically unusual. Instead of the fiscal consolidation we might expect in the midst of a historically long expansion with the economy closing in on full capacity, our fiscal accounts have grown more unbalanced. I’ve sometimes referred to this phenomenon as “upside-down Keynesianism:” applying fiscal stimulus in a pro-cyclical manner, i.e., to an improving economy, versus the much more traditional counter-cyclical approach. And yet, there is no evidence that our unusually elevated deficits have led to the kinds of economic problems many economists and policymakers have long associated with such fiscal imbalances, such as inflationary “overheating,” or upward pressure on interest rates. To the contrary, and this is longer-term result — it applies beyond the last few years — the costs of fiscal imbalances in terms of macroeconomic distortions have been largely elusive. Though policymakers still often voice concerns about rising deficits and debt, their actions suggest less concern, as both spending and tax cuts have been almost exclusively deficit financed in recent years. The analysis below examines the origins of the current fiscal situation, but it also asks: is this situation problematic? Do deficits matter anymore?

Réduire les déductions, les exclusions et les avantages fiscaux aux États-Unis serait une solution afin d’augmenter l’assiette fiscale et réduire le déficit du pays.
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« Tax expenditures » are subsidies delivered through the tax code as deductions, exclusions, and other tax preferences. In fiscal year 2017, tax expenditures reduced federal income tax revenue by roughly $1.5 trillion, and they reduced payroll taxes and other revenues by an additional $130 billion.

Les coupures dans le budget de l’IRS aux États-Unis réduisent la capacité de l’agence à récupérer toutes les sommes dues au gouvernement.
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The IRS’ ability to improve pass-through tax compliance requires a well-funded and fully staffed audit capacity, but policymakers in recent years have targeted its enforcement budget for deep budget cuts. The combination of an underfunded IRS and a tax system rife with avoidance opportunities invites wealthy individuals and profitable businesses to engage in schemes that may constitute illegal tax evasion. As policymakers set next year’s IRS funding, they should at least match — and preferably exceed — the House-approved $567 million boost in IRS enforcement and operations support. Looking to the future, policymakers also should close loopholes for pass-through owners — including by repealing the pass-through deduction at their first opportunity.

Les tensions commerciales entre la Chine et les États-Unis entraînent notamment des inquiétudes de sécurité chez les sociétés américaines qui font affaire en Chine en raison de l’insistance du pays à obtenir des informations sensibles.
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As U.S.-China economic ties have grown, so too have U.S. concerns about the business environment in China and China’s trade practices. Top U.S. concerns include the Chinese state’s increasingly direct and powerful role in the economy and China’s policies requiring U.S. firms to disclose increasingly sensitive information as a precondition to operate in China.

Pour l’année 2019, environ 50 % des recettes fiscales aux États-Unis proviennent de l’impôt sur le revenu des particuliers.
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This report describes the federal tax structure and system in effect for 2019. The report also provides selected statistics on the tax system as a whole. Historically, the largest component of the federal tax system, in terms of revenue generated, has been the individual income tax. For fiscal year (FY) 2019, an estimated $1.7 trillion, or 50 % of the federal government’s revenue, will be collected from the individual income tax. The corporate income tax is estimated to generate another $216 billion in revenue in FY2019, or just over 6 % of total revenue. Social insurance or payroll taxes will generate an estimated $1.2 trillion, or 36 % of revenue in FY2019. For 2019, it is estimated that revenues will be 16.1 % of gross domestic product (GDP), slightly below the post-World War II average of 17.2 % of GDP.

Aux États-Unis, une diminution de la complexité des lois fiscales pourrait améliorer la conformité fiscale et générer des recettes fiscales allant jusqu’à 1 000 G$.
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This week, economists Natasha Sarin and Lawrence Summers published a piece arguing that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) may be able to raise up to $1 trillion in revenue over 10 years by improving tax compliance. The authors’ thoughtful recommendations to boost compliance can be strengthened by better tax policy. A simpler, more economically sound tax policy would encourage taxpayers to comply with the tax code and improve trust in the tax system.

Aux États-Unis, la réduction de la déduction des intérêts hypothécaires en vertu de Tax Cut and Job Act incite les propriétaires à réduire leur hypothèque immobilière et à rechercher d’autres types de planification d’actifs financiers.
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Several changes in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) significantly reduce the tax benefits of taking out a home mortgage (though these changes are scheduled to reverse after 2025). Will the increase in the after-tax cost of mortgage interest encourage some homeowners to use financial assets to pay down their mortgage debt? In at least some cases, the answer is yes.

Le niveau des recettes fiscales des États est revenu à un niveau plus normal aux États-Unis, car l’impact des fluctuations reliées à des planifications en fonction de  la Tax Cuts and Jobs Act sur diverses sources d’impôts a commencé à s’épuiser.
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State government tax revenues fluctuated wildly throughout state fiscal year 2019, which ended on June 30th in 46 states. The fluctuations were largely related to income tax receipts and caused by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Overall, state tax revenues showed robust growth in the second quarter of 2019 after much weaker growth in the fourth quarter of 2018 and modest growth in the first quarter of 2019. Most of the growth in the second quarter of 2019 was fueled by a large increase in income tax collections due to shifts in the timing of income tax payments by some taxpayers.

Economic factors driving revenue growth were all positive in the second quarter of 2019 despite overall concerns that the economic expansion, now the longest on record, may soon be over and that the US economy may be headed for a downturn. As always, growth in economic factors must be viewed with caution. Moreover, growth in some of the economic factors had weakened in the second quarter of 2019.

Preliminary data for July-September 2019 indicate that growth in overall state tax revenue collections returned to normal levels, mostly due to disappearing impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

En Irlande, des mesures fiscales devraient être mises en place afin d’augmenter la participation des femmes et des personnes plus âgées dans le marché de l’emploi afin de diminuer les impacts de la récession de 2007 qui se font encore sentir.
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In recent years, the Irish economy has experienced a sustained expansion phase and the unemployment rate is approaching pre-crisis levels. However, ten years after the crisis, the labour market participation rate, a crucial determinant of labour supply, has not recovered as strongly as expected. Ireland stands out from the EU average, where the activity rate has increased continuously.

The pre-crisis peak in the Irish activity rate mainly reflected increased female participation from a low base and the expansion of the labour force through immigrants, in particular EU citizens, who displayed a higher activity rate than Irish nationals.

Two structural factors account for the sharp decline in activity observed since 2007. The activity rate of young people (15-24), which used to be extremely high, has converged towards the EU average, as young people have been staying longer in education and training. In addition, the age distribution of the working age population is less supportive. The share of those aged 25 34, whose activity rate is typically highest, has shrunk, while that of individuals over 55, whose activity rate is typically lower, is increasing.

Various policy levers could bolster the activity rate. Active labour market policies could improve access to employment for inactive people. As female labour market participation remains far below that of men, bringing more women into the workforce could partly offset the sluggishness of the activity rate. The further increase in the state pension age planned over the next decade could also encourage longer careers. As the impact of these policies would likely materialise only slowly, any further increase in the activity rate is most likely to be driven by net inward migration in the short run.

Les auteurs observent que l’accroissement de la productivité peut inciter les sociétés à réduire leur recours à l’évasion fiscale.
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The extent of tax compliance has important implications for revenue yield, efficiency and the fairness of any tax system. Tax evasion undermines revenue collection, distorts competition, and undermines a country’s development prospects. In this paper, we investigate whether higher productivity causally leads to lower tax evasion. We first present stylized facts consistent with this view and develop a model that illustrates one potential transmission channel. Second, we test the model predictions at the firm level using the self-reported share of declared income as proxy for tax evasion for a large sample of emerging and developing economies. Our results suggests that productivity improvements by firms can lead to lower tax evasion.

Après la crise financière mondiale, le gouvernement britannique a réduit ses dépenses et augmenté les impôts afin de réduire ses emprunts tout en maintenant un niveau suffisant de services publics.
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In the aftermath of the global financial crisis and associated recession, government borrowing soared to more than 10 % of national income. Borrowing has since been reduced through a combination of net tax rises, cuts to the generosity of the working-age social security system and cuts to public service spending. In this briefing note, we provide an overview of what has happened to each of these areas since the crisis, highlighting where (and when) the spending cuts have fallen, and consider the long-term outlook for the make-up of public expenditure.

Au Royaume-Uni, l’implantation graduelle de la limite de deux enfants pour les prestations familiales ainsi que du support additionnel pour le premier enfant risque de mettre de la pression sur les familles pauvres et nombreuses.
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While the benefit system has undergone substantial reform over the past 10 years, there remain significant changes due to take place over the next parliament. The highest stakes relate to the continued roll-out of universal credit (UC), which integrates six existing benefits into one payment. Currently, about 2½ million families are on UC, but on existing plans that number will reach 7 million by 2024–25. While overall the reform does little to total benefit spending, millions of families see an increase in entitlement and millions see a loss – in both cases often in excess of £1,000 per year. Over the next parliament, the government will start to actively move claimants of existing benefits over to UC (rather than waiting for new claimants to apply). This poses significant risks: technical errors on the government’s part, or claimants not filling in the requisite forms, could result in families being left without support.

Au Royaume-Uni, le Parti travailliste veut augmenter l’impôt sur le revenu des contribuables à hauts revenus.
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The Labour Party plans to increase income tax for individuals with annual taxable incomes over £80,000. Under the current system, income tax is payable on incomes above the personal allowance of £12,500 a year. The 40 % higher rate becomes payable at £50,000, and the 45 % additional rate kicks in at £150,000.

Au Royaume-Uni, le niveau de pauvreté des travailleurs a augmenté et le Parti travailliste envisage notamment d’augmenter le salaire minimum pour résorber cette situation.
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Relative in-work poverty has been steadily rising since 1994‑95, meaning that the incomes of poorer working households have not been keeping up with those of middle-income households. Alongside falls in worklessness and pensioner poverty, this has resulted in a large shift in the nature of poverty in the UK: it is now primarily a matter of low incomes for households with someone in work. This represents a significant challenge for any government hoping to reduce poverty, and the Labour party have pledged to eliminate in-work poverty within five years. Achieving this target using benefits alone would be very expensive – likely costing many tens of billions per year – partly because about three-quarters of in-work benefit spending goes on households that are not in poverty. Minimum-wage rises, which have been proposed by both major parties, represent an ineffective way to tackle in-work poverty as only a fifth of minimum-wage workers are in poor households, and half are in the top half of the household income distribution – typically because they live with a higher earner. While there certainly are reforms that could make a dent in in-work poverty in the short run or have a larger effect in the long run, eliminating it entirely within five years is another matter. The statement of desire provides a sense of direction and an aspiration but as a specific target it is not plausible.

Au Royaume-Uni, la réforme de la fiscalité et des prestations survenue en 2010 a notamment augmenté l’incitation au travail.
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The tax and benefit system has undergone significant reform since 2010, with large cuts to working-age benefits, a rise in the main rate of VAT, increases in the rate of the state pension, and reductions in direct tax, including a big rise in the income tax personal allowance. In this briefing note we investigate the impact that these reforms have had on household incomes. An earlier briefing note discussed the benefits policy challenges that the next government will face.

Les auteurs proposent que les revenus de capital – et particulièrement les dividendes – au Royaume-Uni soient imposés au même taux que le revenu de travail avec comme effet une hausse des recettes fiscales prévue de 29 milliards de Livres sur cinq ans.
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It is profoundly unjust that those who work for their incomes are taxed more highly than those whose income is derived from wealth. This situation is all the worse when we consider that the wealthiest are less likely to generate their income from labour than the rest of us. We also consider the impact of these changes if made alongside the new income tax schedules likely to be proposed by Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats.

En Croatie, l’une des raisons de l’échec de l’implantation de l’allocation familiale en 2018 était la méconnaissance du programme par les citoyens.
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Over the last few weeks, there has been media debate about a further increase in the upper means-test threshold for child benefit. The previous 40 % increase made in 2018, which received a lot of media attraction, failed to cause an uptick in the expected number of beneficiaries and children receiving the benefit. In anticipation of the new change, likely to come into effect in January 2020, this article explains what child benefit is and how it is calculated and tries to discover possible reasons for the failure of the 2018 measure. One of them is inadequate information provided to potential beneficiaries, hence one of recommendations would be that all parents and guardians should check their eligibility for child benefit.

Depuis l’entrée en vigueur en Croatie en 2010 de l’Act of Games of Chance, la part des recettes de l’État reliées au jeu est passé de près de 0,6 % à plus de 0,9 %.
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The paper analyses the gambling market in Croatia from 2010 to 2017, i.e. in the period after the effective date of the Act of Games of Chance that is still in force, but only had a couple of amendments. It also includes a detailed analysis of the financial position of the market participants, fiscal effect and contribution of gambling in the state budget revenue.

Puisqu’il y a de plus en plus d’emplois atypiques et que la population est vieillissante, les pays membres de l’OCDE devraient réformer leurs politiques fiscales concernant les pensions de leur population afin d’assurer une pérennité des services.
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Une réforme urgente des régimes de retraite s’impose afin de veiller à ce que les travailleurs temporaires ou à temps partiel, toujours plus nombreux, puissent cotiser suffisamment tout au long de leur vie active pour percevoir un revenu convenable une fois à la retraite, selon un nouveau rapport publié par l’OCDE.

L’échange d’information croissante entre les pays de l’OCDE a permis de réduire grandement la fraude fiscale internationale et cette transparence devrait continuer à être encouragée dans le futur.
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Key to the achievements of the Global Forum has been the rapid and extensive increase in the international network of exchange agreements, the sharp rise in the volume of information exchanged, both on request and automatically, as well as ensuring the information is available to exchange. The veil of secrecy, which allowed tax evaders to hide their assets offshore, has been lifted, enabling tax authorities to obtain information previously beyond their reach.

These measures have had a very concrete impact. Taxpayers are coming forward to disclose formerly concealed wealth and offshore investigations are becoming more effective. Voluntary disclosure programmes and offshore tax investigations have already helped to identify about EUR 102 billion in additional revenue (tax, interest, penalties) and more is to come. Over 1 million of taxpayers have come forward to voluntarily disclose their assets.

Whilst the results achieved are impressive, more needs to be done to ensure that tax scandals of the scale seen in the past are not repeated. Tax evaders remain keen to exploit any new loophole or weakness in the legal and regulatory frameworks across the world. Only through co-ordinated global action, and swift reaction to newly emerging risks, governments around the world can win the battle against tax evasion and avoidance and secure the integrity of their tax OECD.

Les recettes fiscales des pays d’Afrique ont progressé de 1,5 % du PIB en moyenne, soit davantage que dans les pays de l’OCDE, entre 2008 et 2017. Cette progression s’explique par la hausse des recettes de la TVA (0,7 point de pourcentage) et celle des impôts sur le revenu des personnes physiques (0,7 point de pourcentage).
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Les Statistiques des recettes publiques en Afrique est une publication produite conjointement par le Centre de politique et d’administration fiscales et le Centre de développement de l’OCDE, la Commission de l’Union africaine (CUA) et le Forum sur l’administration fiscale africaine (ATAF), avec le soutien financier de l’Union européenne. Elle comprend des statistiques comparables des recettes fiscales et non fiscales pour 26 pays africains : l’Afrique du Sud, le Botswana, le Burkina Faso, le Cabo Verde, le Cameroun, la République du Congo, la République démocratique du Congo, la Côte d’Ivoire, l’Égypte, l’Eswatini, le Ghana, la Guinée équatoriale, le Kenya, Madagascar, le Mali, le Maroc, Maurice, la Mauritanie, le Niger, le Nigéria, l’Ouganda, le Rwanda, le Sénégal, les Seychelles, le Togo et la Tunisie. Le modèle est la base de données des Statistiques des recettes publiques de l’OCDE : c’est pour les pays membres de l’OCDE une référence fondamentale, qui s’appuie sur une méthodologie bien établie. L’extension de la méthodologie de l’OCDE aux pays africains permet de comparer les ratios impôts/PIB et les structures fiscales sur une base cohérente, à la fois entre les pays africains et avec les économies de l’OCDE, d’Amérique latine, des Caraïbes, d’Asie et du Pacifique.

Au Royaume-Uni, dans le cadre de la campagne électorale, les Conservateurs et les Travaillistes ont mis de l’avant un cadre financier qui laisse peu de marge de manœuvre pour atteindre leurs objectifs en lien avec un budget équilibré et une réduction de la dette.
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Fiscal rules are crucial for the government’s stewardship of the public finances and framing its economic priorities. So it is welcome that the main parties have prioritised setting out the rules they would follow, with their announcements following to different degrees the approach recommended by earlier Resolution Foundation work. But fiscal rules are only useful if they are credible and adhered to. This analysis takes as its starting point those rules and asks whether the policy platforms announced by the main parties in and around their manifestos are consistent with them. Our concerning conclusion is that the Conservatives, and particularly Labour, already look highly likely to be on course to break the rules they announced less than a month ago.