Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Finance
Issue 11 - Evidence - Meeting of March 27, 2007
OTTAWA, Tuesday, March 27, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on National Finance, to which was referred Bill S-215, to amend the Income Tax Act in order to provide tax relief, met this day at 9:31 a.m. to give consideration to the bill.
Senator Joseph A. Day (Chairman) in the chair.
The Chairman: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I call this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance to order. I would like to welcome you here this morning to deal with a particular piece of legislation, Bill S-215.
This committee's field of interest is government spending, either directly through the estimates or indirectly through bills that provide borrowing authority or bear upon the spending proposals identified in the estimates.
Bill S-215 is to amend the Income Tax Act in order to provide tax relief. It was tabled in the Senate on May 17, 2006, by Senator Austin and subsequently referred to the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance on February 20 of this year. Honourable senators will know that, since introducing this private member's bill, Senator Austin has retired. We have tried to contact Senator Austin to see if he could be here as a witness, but he is unable to do so.
For the purposes of introducing and understanding the background of this bill, I refer honourable senators to the transcripts of the Senate on second reading on May 30, 2006. Senator Austin spoke on this bill. On June 27, 2006, Senator Di Nino spoke on the fundamental principles of this bill before it was referred to us.
I would like to welcome today our witnesses from the Department of Finance, who will help us with some of the intricacies of taxation and finance and the impact of the proposals in this bill. We have Mr. Baxter Williams and Mr. Don Wilson from the Tax Policy Branch.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for being here. Do you have some opening remarks?
Baxter Williams, Personal Income Tax Division, Tax Policy Branch, Department of Finance Canada: My understanding was that we were appearing to respond to questions that the committee might have. We do not have any opening remarks in particular.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. That is fine. You have had an opportunity to review the proposed bill, presumably, and you understand the contents of the private member's bill that we are dealing with, Bill S-215.
Mr. Williams: Yes.
The Chairman: Before we go to questions, are you able to help us understand the impact of the proposed reduction of personal income tax in the first bracket from 16 per cent to 15 per cent?
Mr. Williams: We could talk first about the fiscal costs associated with that.
The Chairman: That would be helpful.
Mr. Williams: Our estimates, based on examining the cost estimates provided in the 2005 update relative to where there was a proposal to reduce the rate from 16 per cent to 15 per cent, relative to what was implemented in Budget 2006, would indicate that the costs of the further decrease in the rate would be about $1.35 billion in 2007-08, with those costs growing with the economy thereafter. In addition, the costs of further increasing the basic personal amount would be $1.1 billion in 2007-08. Those costs would decrease as the proposal accelerates, a legislated increase that was already legislated, and would result in no net increase in the basic personal amount in 2009 and thereafter. Thus, those costs are temporary and declining over 2008-09.
The Chairman: Help me with the series of events that took place. Maybe we can deal first with the percentage of income tax on the first bracket of taxpayers. As I understand it, everyone who pays tax pays in the first bracket, and some go on into other brackets.
Mr. Williams: On a net tax basis, the percentage of overall personal income tax paid by individuals in the first bracket is relatively small. In general, the tax they pay is offset by refundable credits received either as a result of the goods and service tax credit or the Canada Child Tax Benefit. In fact, and Mr. Wilson, please correct me if I am wrong, I think we find that the bottom 50 per cent of taxpayers would pay less than half a percentage of all personal income taxes on a net basis.
Don Wilson, Senior Chief, Personal Income Tax Division, Tax Policy Branch, Department of Finance Canada: May I give a somewhat different answer to that? The bottom rate was 16 per cent until January 1, 2005, at which point it was reduced to 15 per cent. That reduction was implemented as a result of the 2005 Economic and Fiscal Update of the previous government. The rate then changed to 15.5 per cent, which is its current rate as of July 1, 2006.
The Chairman: This bill before us purports to bring the rate back to 15 per cent. We are talking about half a percentage point in the first bracket, as far as the rate is concerned.
Mr. Wilson: Yes.
The Chairman: The figure of $1.35 billion that was given to us by Mr. Williams relates to one half of one per cent?
Mr. Williams: That is correct.
The Chairman: One half of one per cent. If this bill passed and the government implemented it, then the cost to the treasury would be, in 2007-08, $1.35 billion.
Mr. Williams: Actually, the bill contains two elements. You would also have to take account of the second element, which is the increase in the basic personal amount, and that would add a further $1.1 billion of cost.
The Chairman: It does get quite complicated when you try to deal with both those features at the same time. Annex A in our material shows, first, the proposal that was made in Budget 2005, then the accelerated change in that first bracket that was made in the economic update in November 2005, and then a further change that was made to all of this with the change of government in 2006.
As I understand it, by 2010-11, each of these schedules will lead to $10,000 tax free before one is into the bracket.
Mr. Wilson: You are speaking of the basic personal amount and that is exactly right. Under any scenario, we are scheduled to reach legislatively a minimum of $10,000 in 2009.
The Chairman: In other words, the $1.1 billion is an impact on 2007-08, which will slowly disappear because each of these schedules of creating, before one starts paying tax, will ultimately converge and they will all come together.
I think I generally understand the outline.
Senator Ringuette: My understanding is that Senator Austin had put this private member's bill forth because he believed it was best for the Canadian economy, consumers and Canadians at large and any reduction in taxes would be better off coming from your first line of taxation, which is income tax, instead of a reduction in GST which has been put forth by the current government.
You identified the cost of going from 16 per cent to 15.5 per cent. What has been the cost of the reduction in the GST?
Mr. Wilson: There are many ways to answer that, but I think that, on an annual basis, it is about $5 billion a year. I can give you a more precise figure, but to give you a working ballpark, it is just over $5 billion.
Mr. Williams: I will give you a more precise answer. It is $5.17 billion in 2007-08 and $5.375 billion in 2008-09.
The Chairman: As a point of clarification, was that the 1 per cent?
Mr. Williams: That is the 1 percentage point decrease.
Senator Ringuette: I know that the Department of Finance usually does all the economic outlook, unless you also do that, but what was the impact in regard to consumer purchases and Canadians having more money in their pockets to purchase their basic needs? Did you perform some economic impact study in regard to this 1 per cent decrease in the GST?
Mr. Williams: We did estimates of the potential benefit that it would provide different families at different income groups, and that was published in Budget 2006. Those are more dollar-wise estimates, which we could review with you to give you a general idea.
Senator Ringuette: Yes, I think that it would help us to understand the impact of making this decision.
From my perspective, a reduction in the GST is more of a benefit to Canadians in the higher income bracket, all things being equal. I would like to understand and to see the numbers of the different income brackets and the effect of the reduction of 1per cent and 5 per cent on the GST. Do you have a comparative tableau, as we say in French?
Mr. Williams: I could speak to that generally. The thing to keep in mind is that the overall tax relief provided to individuals in Budget 2006 was significantly greater than what was proposed in the 2005 update as a package. I think those would be the two points of comparison.
If you look at it over our current budget horizon of 2006-07 to 2008-09, the total value of relief to individuals in Budget 2006 was about $29.5 billion. In comparison, the Economic and Fiscal Update provided about $13 billion.
Senator Ringuette: To which income bracket of Canadians are you referring?
Mr. Williams: Naturally, with more resources, you would expect that everyone would receive a greater amount of tax relief under the 2006 Budget, given the allocation of resources, than under the update.
Two points concerning the distribution of the 2006 Budget include the Canada Employment Credit, which was for working Canadians. It raises the amount of income that they could earn before paying taxes, and it would be added on top of a low-income worker's basic personal amount. It meant that by the time they hit $11,000 in earned income, they could take full advantage of that credit. That credit provided significant relief. In 2007 it provides about $155 of relief.
In comparison, the value of a reduction in the lowest rate increases with your income until you hit about $37,000. It is not until you earn $37,000 that you are able to fully benefit from the value of the rate reduction. That would suggest that that measure in particular would provide greater relief to lower-income Canadians, at least over that income range, than the rate reduction proposed by Senator Austin.
Senator Ringuette: Is it possible for you to provide the members of this committee with those comparative figures?
Mr. Williams: We could do that, certainly.
The Chairman: If you could provide those to the clerk, I will see that they get circulated to all the members of the committee. It would be helpful.
Mr. Williams: Yes.
Senator Stratton: Since Bill S-215 was first introduced by the previous government, there have been two budgets put forward by the new government: one for last year and one currently. What we need, as a comparison, is not just what Bill S-215 shows vis-à-vis the Canadian taxpayer, but also how did those two recent budgets impact in comparison to Bill S-215? If you are measuring apples and apples, you need to do that for the sake of everyone here. That would be more appropriate than anything.
I do not know the answer to this, surprisingly. It is important for the public to see that. If the Conservative government has done its job the way it sees fit, as the former government did its job as it saw fit, it would be interesting to see the comparison. Can you do that, gentlemen, or is that just a heck of a pile of work?
Mr. Williams: We could certainly investigate.
Senator Stratton: Right now this area is very muddy and difficult to understand. Can you clearly state for Senator Ringuette what the impact of Bill S-215 would be and then what impact, on an apples-to-apples basis, the two new budgets will have?
Mr. Williams: I think you would also want to include the tax fairness plan.
The Chairman: Any information you can develop to analyze the impact of this policy decision over previous government policy decisions helps us to interpret the impact of Senator Austin's bill, which in effect tries to re- implement the earlier policy decision. If you could provide it to our clerk, we would then circulate it to all the members of the committee.
Senator Stratton: Then we may have the witnesses back.
The Chairman: Yes, to explain it to us.
Senator Nancy Ruth: You started with figures outlining how the bill would affect the treasury. I, too, am interested in its impact on the people. Who would be impacted by the reductions and who would be affected by the increases in both the lowest marginal tax rates and the basic personal amounts? What benefit would there be for the people?
Mr. Williams: I could give you an approximate idea and maybe clarify it in the future. Would that be helpful?
Senator Nancy Ruth: That would be fine.
Have you considered the gender impact of such changes in the law or in the Income Tax Act? How would women be affected?
Beyond that is the bigger question of what it is that Finance Canada does in its overview of the tax system in terms of its impact on women. That is always a issue in which I am interested.
Mr. Williams: Our proposals contain a gender analysis, and we can return with a gender analysis.
Senator Nancy Ruth: It would be great to see it because everyone says they do it, but we do not get to see the outcome or how it actually happens. That would be wonderful.
Senator Ringuette: Do you also perform an impact assessment on the regions or the provinces?
Mr. Wilson: We generally do it. It depends on the particular policy in question, but when we are looking at something like changing rates or brackets, which is systemic and broad-based, we will first and foremost look at the impact on taxpayers in different income groups. Ultimately, we will look at the regional distributions, which is part of informing provinces, for example, of the implications of each federal budget on their own budgets in turn.
Senator Ringuette: Could you also supply that information to the clerk of this committee? It would be helpful.
The Chairman: Mr. Williams, there was a series of questions by Senator Nancy Ruth, and you have said that you will try to provide general comments that might provoke more questions from us. You have indicated that you will follow up and confirm our queries. If you would like to make some of that general commentary now, that would be helpful to us.
Mr. Williams: I could talk about the rate reduction. The maximum benefit that would be provided to those earning about $37,000 nowadays would be about $120. The benefit would decline with income down to about $10,000, at which point there would be virtually no benefit, as that individual would be in a non-tax-paying position. We could provide a little more precision to those numbers later.
The Chairman: If you add up everyone between $37,000 and $10,000, all the savings that would come about if the reduction were 0.5 per cent would result in a loss to the treasury or a reduction in funds to the treasury of $1.35 billion.
Mr. Williams: That is right. It is surprising, but with 17 million taxpayers, a change such as this benefits a large majority of them. Even though it is a small benefit, the costs add up quickly when spread over the large numbers.
Mr. Wilson: As a point of clarification, this benefit goes to everyone who is in a taxable position. Everyone benefits from that rate reduction.
Mr. Williams: Although at the lower end, the benefit would be smallest.
The Chairman: Is that all of the general commentary you are able to provide in response to the series of questions by Senator Nancy Ruth?
Senator Nancy Ruth, is there anything further you wish to ask that might elicit some response at this time?
Senator Nancy Ruth: I do not think so, but I would love to see an example of how you do it.
Mr. Williams: We will return with a gender analysis.
The Chairman: We look forward to that and to the regional impact analysis. It will be interesting to see all the material that you will provide to us.
Senator Stratton: Then the witnesses can come back and tell us what it means.
Senator Mitchell: I, too, am very interested in the gender analysis and look forward to seeing it. Do you actually conduct a structured, institutionalized, gender analysis process for each proposed tax change? Is that a matter of course?
Mr. Williams: That is a matter of practice.
Senator Mitchell: Would that be a public document, or is that something for which we would have to submit a request under the Access to Information Act?
Mr. Wilson: Those documents have in fact already been subjected to an access to information request and have been released in their entirety, so we would be more than happy to provide them here.
Senator Mitchell: Does it take an access to information request? Would it be something you would release as a matter of course?
Mr. Wilson: No, not as a matter of course.
Senator Mitchell: If we could have those, that would be great.
You mentioned that the half a point would account for a $120 tax saving up to the first level of $37,500, but half a point is more than $120. How do you get to $120?
Mr. Williams: That is basically $24,000, because the first amount would be non-taxable. I am taking a rule of thumb estimate. I think that would be fairly close when all other credits are factored in.
Generally, on income you earn, the first amount would be non-taxable by virtue of the basic personal amount. In addition, you would receive credits for any Employment Insurance or CPP premiums that you have paid on it. By the time all those are taken into account, you arrive at that.
Senator Mitchell: It is $37,500 of income, but not taxable income.
Mr. Williams: Yes, income you do not pay tax on. It would be taxable income but, from a technical point of view, the credits are applied to taxable income.
Senator Mitchell: Is there a fundamental, philosophical difference that drove the tax policy between across-the- board tax cuts of 16 per cent to 15 per cent brought in by the previous government versus the targeted tax cuts of a tax credit for children? Not all people have children, obviously. Do you see that as a fundamental, philosophical change in our tax policy? Was there some consistency? Was it generally done as tax cuts across the board and is that now a fundamental change?
Mr. Williams: Both plans had elements of broad-based relief delivered through the personal income tax system and then in the budget through a cut in the GST. Governments have introduced credits to address specific social objectives. I can only speculate, but I would say that the new government's objectives have changed to address their priorities.
Senator Mitchell: What impact on economic productivity does an income tax cut have versus a GST cut? Is that an assessment you make?
Mr. Williams: We do not have a specific assessment of the two proposals, no.
Senator Mitchell: It is generally conceded, is it not, that a cut to GST is not particularly useful for economic productivity, whereas a cut to income tax probably is?
Mr. Williams: From a Finance Canada perspective, we would see all tax cuts as contributing to productivity. There are differences depending on the type of tax instrument. It is true that we published analyses in the past showing that, in certain circumstances, cuts to personal income tax would have a greater contribution to economic efficiency than a reduction in the GST, but the point is that both would improve productivity.
Mr. Wilson: I would point out that that analysis has not gone down to the level of specific personal income tax types of reductions. The analysis is done at a very general level. We could not speak to a specific proposition vis-à-vis the GST with the analysis that has been done today.
Senator Mitchell: Do you have any analysis of the impact of targeted cuts for children on the likelihood that one parent or the other will stay home out of the workforce?
Mr. Williams: No, we do not have any analysis of that.
Senator Mitchell: I may be wandering a bit, but I am interested in this idea that the tax credits for figure skating or polo or hockey or the new tax credits for children apply only to people who actually have taxable income. The flip side of that would be a minor guaranteed annual income, so that even if you do not pay income tax you could be paid that just as a credit. Was any consideration given to that so that families who do not have taxable income could get the money to buy the skates that Mr. Flaherty is able to be subsidized by?
Mr. Williams: The general approach is that the credits are meant to offset the taxes paid on the income, and it was on that basis for certain expenses. That is why the credits were implemented as non-refundable.
Senator Mitchell: When you talk about refundable credits, those would be credits you would get even if you did not pay taxes?
Mr. Williams: Yes.
Mr. Wilson: It is worth noting that there is a GST credit for low-income individuals, a universal child benefit of $100 a month per child under six that is now available, as well as the whole set of benefits under the Canada Child Tax Benefit and the national benefit supplement. These are all refundable credits that are targeted to families who would not, in your example, be buying skates or may not be paying taxes.
Senator Mitchell: We have a table, here which you have probably seen. It indicates that, with the 2005 Budget update, there would be an increase of $1,200 in the basic personal amount, which would be added to the basic personal amount in 2005 of $8,148, bringing it to $9,348. Yet, the update was based on the idea that the basic personal amount would increase to $10,000 by 2009. Is the difference due to these built-in inflationary increases?
Mr. Williams: Exactly.
Senator Mitchell: What is the inflation rate? Is it 3 per cent?
Mr. Wilson: No, it is more in the range of 2 per cent. It varies from year to year, but 2 per cent or 2.2 per cent.
The Chairman: I have a point of clarification with respect to the lowest bracket rate of 15 per cent that was applied during the year 2005. Initially that was brought about by the November 2005 fiscal update, and then a ways and means motion implemented it back to January 1, 2005. For the year 2005, the rate was 15 per cent. The government changed in January 2006. The government brought in Bill C-13, which set the rate effective July 1, 2006, at 15.5 per cent, but it confirmed the earlier government's position of 15 per cent for all of 2005 and six months of 2006. Now we have this private member's bill, Bill S-215, with which we are dealing today, and one of the provisions deals with the year 2005. It purports to legislate a reduction for the year 2005 and forward to 15 per cent. I want you to focus just on 2005. Legally, do we need a bill to reduce the income tax rate for the year 2005 to 15 per cent?
Mr. Williams: No.
The Chairman: Thank you. That is what I thought, but I needed confirmation.
Mr. Williams: To be clear, it would need to be effective January 1, 2006, because, from a statutory perspective, the rate for 2006 is 15.25 per cent. In terms of withholdings, Canada Revenue Agency administered it as a 15 per cent rate for the first half of the year and a 15.5 per cent rate for the latter half of the year.
The Chairman: From a legal point of view, it was 15.25 for the year?
Mr. Williams: That is correct.
The Chairman: That was for 2006.
Mr. Williams: Yes.
The Chairman: If we were to accept this bill, we should amend portions of it. We do not need the 2005 provisions that are in this bill. We should try to sort out the percentage in 2006, having in mind what happened with the new government, the change of government and the way they handled this increase in tax in 2006 onward.
Senator Ringuette: You may be on to something here. You are saying that, for 2006, it is 15.25, but that is not the reality.
Canadian taxpayers should have paid 15 per cent from January 1 to July 1 on that portion of their income, and then 15.5 per cent from July 1 to December 31. Is that the application that has been given? There could be a big difference individually and collectively because some people — I am thinking especially of seasonal workers — have income in one portion of the year and not in another. The difference of 0.5 per cent at the end of the day when they do their income tax returns could have made a difference. We are talking about the legal difference.
Have you applied the 15.25 per cent for the entire income year instead of applying the legal bracket of 15 per cent for the first six months and 15.5 per cent for the last six months of the year? I know it is a delicate issue because it could mean quite a lot of money. There are also legal implications.
Mr. Williams: From a legal perspective, in terms of tax liability and given what was legislated, the rate applied was 15.25 per cent for the year. In filing taxes, there is no way of determining from the records of individuals what time during the year or in what month they earn the income. They receive a T-4 at the end of year which gives them their total income for the year, but there is no information saying that the income was earned in January or December. As a result, it would be a huge administrative undertaking from a legal perspective to divide the rate at July 1. In collecting remittances, CRA can make those adjustments, but the objective is to ensure that the withholdings on income are approximately equal to the tax liability at the end of the year.
With regard to the figures we were discussing earlier, I would point out that the maximum value of the difference was about $120 of tax relief for someone earning $37,000 a year. There would be a question of whether we would want to look at undertaking something of that administrative complexity given the value of the tax relief at stake.
Senator Ringuette: That begs many questions. First, Parliament passed a bill as of July 1 that the government knew was impossible to administer. I understand the reality of what you are saying. Changing the bracket in the middle of the year is different from changing the GST bracket in the middle of the month because the GST can be accounted for on almost a daily basis.
Essentially, the government introduced a bill to change a tax bracket in the middle of the year that they knew could not be applied because you could not realistically apply it.
I know this issue is technical.
Mr. Williams: To be clear, I will confirm this point and review Bill C-13.
The legislation specified a 15.25 per cent rate for the year. I think the communication material that was developed intended to show the impact on taxpayers in terms of the change in withholdings, and that is where the July number becomes material. I think it is a way of trying to describe how it would impact people rather than the legislative change that was brought into force.
Senator Ringuette: You are saying that the communication tools used by the government did not really reflect the legislation. Perhaps I am being too technical here, but our discussion certainly has brought forth to me the fact that changing the income tax percentage in the middle of the year is mission impossible. As senators, having a longer parliamentary life than do members the House of Commons, we should be well aware of this for the years to come.
Mr. Wilson: There is a question of fiscal accounting versus administration. The administration aspect of the 15.25 per cent rate was clearly articulated in the tax annex to Budget 2006. There was an explanation of how the change in the middle of the year would be given effect. The administration is entirely consistent with what was committed to in Budget 2006 and how it was ultimately legislated in Bill C-13.
Senator Mitchell: The seniors' income splitting initiative would apply to pensions. If you were to retire from teaching at age 55 with a full pension, you could split your pension with your spouse, but if you were to retire at age 60 with simply RRSPs, you could not split that income until the age of 65; is that correct?
Mr. Williams: That is correct.
Senator Mitchell: That initiative hinges on the idea that it applies to pension income, and RRSPs or RRIFS do not become pension income under the tax act until after age 65; is that right?
Mr. Williams: The distinction was introduced recognizing that people could withdraw money from their RRSPs at any time and it would not necessarily be used as pension income. An age limit was introduced to reflect the approximate time when people could be considered to be retired.
Senator Mitchell: It is ironic that the reason the Minister of Finance announced the initiative to allow people to split pensions was in response to the setback that people experienced due to the changes in income trusts. The irony is that you are not dependent on income trusts for your pension income but you are dependent upon income trusts in your RRSP or RIFF, and yet you can split your pension before you can split your RIFF or RRSP. It is an interesting irony in my mind. Is it in yours? It came out immediately as the compensation for people who were hurt by the income trust and yet while they may benefit eventually they would not benefit as quickly as someone who retired earlier on an actual pension.
If you have a group RRSP with a company or a defined contribution pension, which is essentially an RRSP, could you split that income if you retired on that at age 55, or can you split it only at age 65? Is it only a defined pension benefit that will qualify?
Mr. Williams: I would have to confirm that.
Senator Mitchell: Could you for me, please?
Mr. Williams: Sure.
The Chairman: I have one short question. The basic personal exemption is the front end of individuals who have income and they do not pay tax until they get to a certain threshold. I think we can forget the 2005 Budget. The fiscal update in November 2005 and the 2006 Budget had two different schedules of increases in that basic personal exemption before one starts to pay tax. The November 2005 update accelerated the proposal and then it was brought back again. Each of them provides increases in that basic personal allowance but at different rates, leading to 2010 when it will be around $10,000 plus an inflationary factor. Have you done analysis as to how many taxpayers would fall off the tax rate and not required to pay tax under each of the schemes leading up to 2010?
Mr. Williams: We have analysis for selected years, although I am not sure if it is strictly comparable.
Mr. Wilson: In the 2005 update, the previous government indicated that the increase in the basic personal amount to $10,000 in 2009 would take 860,000 people off the tax rolls.
The Chairman: Presumably that number would grow as you increased the basic personal allowance along the way to the end.
Mr. Wilson: That is the mature value when you reach the $10,000. That is a cumulative $1,200 increase, plus as was rightly pointed out the impacts of indexation or inflation on those increases over time.
The Chairman: I do not want to ask you to start doing an analysis, but if you have something done that you could share with us showing how you get to that figure, that would be very helpful. I would like to understand the impact of the two different decisions in terms of accelerating the annual amounts leading up to 2009-10.
Mr. Wilson: It is a complicated analysis, not because of these measures per se, but because of a number of other things done within the tax system in recent budgets. For example, the Canada Employment Credit in Budget 2006 has the same effect as an increase in the basic personal amount for those individuals who qualify. In that case it is a $1,000 credit amount for people with employment incomes.
The Chairman: I think we can exclude programs. Rather, I am thinking across the board to everybody. Any government programs that target certain groups can be left out of this analysis.
Senator Ringuette: The difference here, as Mr. Wilson has indicated, is yes, we should look at the issue on the whole. Fifteen per cent of children are poor in Canada and I would venture to say that the taxable income benefit is important in regards to this group of Canadians. If you have a $500 tax credit on a work-related item then that $500 does not go to the basic exemption. In regards to trying to have more money for the poorest of Canadians, it does not necessarily do the trick. The income tax bracket increase is one thing, but reducing that income tax bracket to introduce on the other hand measures like paying for skates that 15 per cent of Canadian families cannot afford is another. Also, sometimes income is not work-related because you are a single mom. The impact on the poorest segment of our population is considerable. I think that we need to understand that. If you look at the entire picture, okay, yes, the $500 has been increased in the personal income bracket. You will get it through a working tax credit. Well, the impact on the people who are touched and those who need the most investment from this country is not the same at all.
Mr. Williams: The Canada Employment Credit is the same as increasing the basic personal amount for people who work, just as the pension income credit is the same as increasing the basic personal amount for those with pension income. To get an apples-to-apples comparison, I think you would want to build those two aspects into our analysis.
The Chairman: If I can put them in layman's terms, instead of saying everyone gets a tax break and there are fewer people paying tax, we will have more people paying tax but we will have programs that target certain groups as opposed to having a general policy. That was the policy decision that was made and I think we understand it.
You are saying we should look at the impact on the targeted groups because those groups could be the same.
Mr. Williams: You could achieve the same thing.
The Chairman: Maybe you would get more political credit for doing that. I am being a bit facetious, because that is out of your realm.
Mr. Williams: Yes.
Senator Mitchell: We do not always have this kind of relaxed time with people with your expertise so if you do not mind I would like to impose further.
Have you ever done an analysis between tax cuts and votes? That would be interesting.
To follow up on gender analysis, one of the issues is the fact that in our society we do not put a lot of economic value on the work that people, generally women, do who stay home to raise children or care for elderly parents. A lot of thought has been given, I am sure in your department as elsewhere, to how we as a society accord that kind of work economic value, because it does have economic value, and value beyond that, of course.
Can you comment on the idea of allowing — and this does not help single mothers or single parents of any kind — a couple to pay into CPP for one of the two who stay home to raise children or to accord extra RRSP room? For example, you might attribute a nominal income to someone who stays at home to work with children, to raise children, of $12,000 a year and then give 18 per cent RRSP room. That, however, would have to be paid by the other partner who is earning the income. Has any thought been given to that?
Mr. Williams: I cannot speak specifically to CPP, but I would point out that with RRSPs there is some recognition of that. There is the ability to contribute to a spousal RRSP, which generally would provide a greater tax advantage to an individual where you have a one-earner family than if the earner maintained the contributions within their own RRSP. There is some recognition in that particular situation.
Senator Mitchell: That will be of less significance now if you can split your pension income out of your RRSP at age 65 because it will not matter if it is spousal or not anymore. It also does not give you extra RRSP room for acknowledging the extra work that someone is doing by raising children or looking after an elderly parent.
In the budget, it seemed to me that they have increased the RRSP maturity from age 69 to age 71, which is a good idea, but there is also something in there whereby someone might be able to collect their pension and continue to work and pay into their pension. Is that true?
Mr. Williams: That is correct.
Senator Mitchell: Would a senator or a member of parliament or a public servant be able to do that? How would that work? Not that I want to do that, but I am interested in how that would be defined.
Mr. Williams: There are two aspects: the pension benefit standards aspect and a tax aspect. The legislation that was proposed in the budget allows changes in the tax code that would permit a situation like this to occur without a tax penalty being imposed.
Corresponding changes will be introduced to the federal Pension Benefits Standards Act to reflect the proposal. However, provincial governments also have jurisdiction over pension plans. We do not have a detailed analysis of the specific accommodations within each province at the moment, but changes would have to be made there.
Furthermore, there is an aspect of the policy of the employer, who would have to decide that this is beneficial and implement changes to the pension plan regulations to allow it. I know as a civil servant, for example, that our current pension plan would not allow me to return to work and collect a pension. That is a policy decision the federal government has made for a number of reasons. This is a permissive piece of legislation; there are other actions that would have to occur.
Senator Mitchell: One of the unintended consequences that we would have to watch for would be an employer using the pension fund to reduce salary costs and thereby jeopardize the ability of the pension to sustain its obligations in the longer term.
Mr. Williams: That is one of the reasons why it is limited to situations where people are eligible to receive an unreduced pension.
Senator Mitchell: It cannot be used that way.
Mr. Williams: Yes.
The Chairman: Those being all of the questions for today, I would like to call this meeting to a conclusion.
Mr. Williams and Mr. Wilson, thank you very much for being here. This was an interesting discussion we have had this morning. We should do this on a regular basis. It is very helpful to us and we look forward to receiving the material you will send.
I will now suspend this meeting and we will reconvene in approximately two minutes to talk about future business.
The committee adjourned.