Adam Found, Ben Dachis, Michael Brooks
What Gets Measured Gets Managed: The 2014 C.D. Howe Institute Business Tax Burden Estimate
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In the fall of 2013, the C.D. Howe Institute released a paper showing how much provincial and municipal business property taxes increase the cost of new investment. Due to the importance of the topic and changing environment the Institute will be releasing a 2014 paper entitled "What Gets Measured Gets Managed: The 2014 C.D. Howe Institute Business Tax Burden Estimate". Attendees will receive a sneak peek into the findings of the 2014 paper. Benjamin Dachis and Adam Found, two of the paper's co-authors, will discuss the burden of business property taxes in Canada. Michael Brooks, CEO of REALpac will comment on the findings of the paper and on the effects of business property taxes on Canadians.
Michael Brooks is the Chief Executive Officer of REALPac (1997 – 2012; 2014 - ), the senior Canadian trade association for large public and institutional investment real estate companies. REALPac represents the investment real estate industry in government relations, public relations and standard setting.
Michael has represented the Canadian real estate industry in all major policy initiatives with government, including property tax reform in several provinces, the emergence of real estate investment trusts and enabling legislation, real property income tax issues, telecom deregulation and building access, bankruptcy and insolvency rights of landlords, energy deregulation, energy consumption measurement, Competition Act fees and thresholds, real estate broker registration requirements, government standards and incentives for the multi-family sector, the National Building Code and building code changes, financial standards, national accounting standards (IFRS), capital markets issues re REITs, capital market regulation, governance and development charges, to name a few.
Benjamin Dachis is a Senior Policy Analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute. He started with the C.D. Howe Institute in 2006 as a Research Fellow and also has experience with a major U.S. think tank. He returned to the C.D. Howe Institute as a Policy Analyst in January of 2008.
Dachis has an Hon. BA in Economics from the University of Toronto, an MSc from the London School of Economics, where he was awarded the George and Hilda Ormsby prize for his dissertation, and an MA in Economics from the University of Toronto.
He has written on municipal finance, transportation, tax, energy, environmental and labour policy. He is a member of the 2012 Insight Grants Economics Committee for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Adam Found received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Toronto, where he specialized in public finance and industrial organization. During 2014, he has continued to work in both the academic and municipal sectors through teaching economics at Trent University in Peterborough and through his capacity as Manager of Corporate Assets with the City of Kawartha Lakes.
A significant portion of his doctorate thesis, entitled “Essays in Municipal Finance”, focuses on the impact of business property taxes on investment and was undertaken by Adam in conjunction with two C.D. Howe Institute publications (co-authored with Peter Tomlinson and Ben Dachis): “Hiding in Plain Sight: The Harmful Impact of Provincial Business Property Taxes on Investment” (2012) and “What Gets Measured Gets Managed: The Economic Burden of Business Property Taxes” (2013).
This partnership with the Institute has been of tremendous value, and its extension in the form of a fellowship gives Adam an excellent opportunity to continue his work at the Institute on business taxation and other public finance topics. Under the fellowship, Adam first expects to pick up where he and his co-authors left off by updating their 2013 study on incorporating business property taxes into the marginal effective tax rate (METR) on capital investment.
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