Canada’s Fraser Institute calls for drastic tax cuts to fuel growth

Canada, through Finance Minister John Manley, has a unique opportunity to shift fiscal policy there in the next month when he delivers his first budget. Rather than sticking to the old policies of tax and spend, which have delivered poor to miserable results, Manley can place Canada on the path of great economic prosperity.

This can be achieved by implementing a large-scale, multi-year plan of tax cuts

Reducing the top marginal tax rate.

Collapsing the four personal income tax rates to two.

Accelerating and enhancing previously announced corporate income tax cuts.

Abolishing capital taxes, and reducing dividend taxes.

Canada needs to acknowledge the tax and spend ways of the central government and indeed many provincial governments are simply not the way to promote prosperity and economic well being. Rather, the federal and provincial governments need to provide the best possible environment within which economic activity can occur.

The best way to do this is to reduce taxes by a minimum of one-third over the next 5 years and implement the tax cuts already discussed.

Such rationalised, focused government coupled with large-scale tax cuts will lead Canada into an unprecedented period of economic prosperity.

Source: Jason Clemens, Director of Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute, Canada Needs a Bush-Like Tax Cut, Fraser Institute, January 9, 2003.

For text http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore1.asp?sNav=ed&id=131
For more on International (Taxes and Growth) http://www.ncpa.org/iss/int/

FMF Policy Bulletin/15 January 2003