{"id":498959,"date":"2026-02-25T17:10:18","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T17:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/498959\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T17:10:18","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T17:10:18","slug":"canadas-government-has-relied-way-too-much-on-personal-taxes-economist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/498959\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada’s government has ‘relied way too much on personal taxes’: Economist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The federal government is leaning too hard on individual taxpayers to fill its coffers, says a veteran economist known for his push to reform corporate taxes in the 1990s.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompared to all the G7 countries, we have a higher amount of taxes as a share of earnings. That’s remarkable,\u201d Jack Mintz told an audience at a Canadian Club Toronto event held on Tuesday. \u201cWe’ve relied way too much on personal taxes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mintz is a member of the Order of Canada, and also the president\u2019s fellow at the University of Calgary\u2019s School of Public Policy. Back in 1996, then-prime minister Paul Martin tapped him to lead his government\u2019s Technical Committee on Business Taxation. The so-called \u201cMintz Committee\u201d helped usher in a decade-long reduction in federal corporate income tax.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the wrong mix of taxes,\u201d Mintz said Tuesday. \u201cThere are a number of things that we could do to change that mix away from the personal income tax without necessarily reducing the amount of total taxes paid by Canadians.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development<\/a>, personal income tax as a percentage of total tax revenue in Canada is about 12 percentage points higher than the group\u2019s average. Meanwhile, social insurance taxes, like mandatory payroll deductions for Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Employment Insurance (EI), are about 10 percentage points lower.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only do we rely too much on income taxation, personal and corporate, but we, compared to other countries, don’t rely enough on payroll and the goods and services tax,\u201d Mintz said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’ve been whittling away that base. The latest now is housing. We now have to take the GST off new housing,\u201d he added. \u201cWe could actually have more payroll taxes, especially to fund healthcare, like a number of countries have done.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mintz is known for calling for sweeping change. His 2022 proposal for corporate tax reform in Canada called for a \u201cbig bang\u201d<\/a> to eliminate complexity and attract foreign investment.<\/p>\n

At Tuesday\u2019s event, Mintz was joined by Deloitte Canada deputy chair and board director Fatima Laher. She says while Canada\u2019s tax system is antiquated, with its last fulsome review in the 1960s, the best way forward is evolution, rather than revolution.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to talk and use words like \u2018modernizing our system,\u2019 because it\u2019s less in-your-face,\u201d Laher said. \u201cThe minute you say \u2018reform,\u2019 people basically go back into their shell, and think \u2018Oh my God, what\u2019s going to happen?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For this tax year, the federal government cut the tax rate on the lowest income bracket by one percentage point from 2024. This applies to individuals who earn less than $58,523 per year. Meanwhile, CPP contributions increased by two per cent, translating to a modest monthly rise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The federal government is leaning too hard on individual taxpayers to fill its coffers, says a veteran economist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498960,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,5437,199713,28088,199711,44,199712,251],"class_list":{"0":"post-498959","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-canada-pension-plan","11":"tag-corporate-taxes","12":"tag-income-tax","13":"tag-jack-mintz","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-payroll-taxes","16":"tag-the-federal-government"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498959","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498959\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}