That is the 64 dollar question. It depends on the next, more aggressive budget.
I hope they keep flow through. They should reduce corporate taxes to 25%, and reduce the max tax on personal taxes to 35% for provincial and Federal. They should also reduce the GST a tad.
They should also consider flow through tax deductions for ALL industries' R&D, not just mining. And make it so the capital gains tax for sale of flow through shares is now charged on the difference between the buying and selling price, not the entire price of the stock when sold, as if it were all gain.
The way they could afford this is to max the FT contribution to a total reduction of income to 65% of taxable income and to a max investment of $500K per person or $5 million per company per year. By this I mean that the FT investment would be a maximum of $500,000 per person for the purposes of taxable income reduction in each year. And to allow this, the person would have to make $1.5 million in income. The deduction could be spread over several years forward and backward as is allowed now. If the taxable deduction were only 100% of investment, and the capital gains tax was based on 25% of the difference between buying and selling, then at a tax rate of 35%, if one bought a stock at one dollar it would cost you 65 cents with the tax deduction. When you sold it at $1.50, you would pay CG tax on 1.50-65 = 85 cents, so at a 35% bracket on 25% of capital gain of 0.25 X 0.85 X 0.35 = $0.074 in tax. At first it sounds like you pay more tax. You do, as you make more, but that is the point. In the non-FT tax situation you make 50 cents minus 4.3 cents in tax. In the FT tax situation you make 85 cents, so you pay 7.4 cents in tax on the stock, but you still make a total of 77.6 cents, or 70% more on the stock. Most people could not afford on the average at taxable incomes of even $100K per year, more than about $25K worth of FT investment, so the government would not lose more than $8750 in taxes on these high income people, out of a total average tax burden of $35K. That is bearable but would give an enormous shot in the arm to companies R&D which is sadly lacking in North America. We need to do something to catch up to the rest of the world who are eating our lunch in tech and new industry. We want jobs, so we need new developments in industry. The only way we can afford this is tax relief to do so.
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