Recently, there has been much ado about Netflix: whether it should be regulated or taxed and whether it is destroying Canadian content production or it is a new global platform that will export Canadian content to the world. The federal government recently touted an agreement with the company for a $500 million investment in Canadian content over five years alongside a “first ever” strategy for the Canadian creative economy.
The Quebec legislature swiftly and unanimously voted for a motion to “ensure the Quebec sales tax is imposed on all foreign companies that offer products and services online, notably in the cultural sector, as soon as possible.” However, Quebec Finance Minister Carlos Leitao said the province won’t take any…
The federal government's proposed changes to the tax treatment of "passive" investment income in small business were among the most criticized elements of the consultation paper released last July. Wednesday's announcement from Finance Minister Bill Morneau addresses one of their most serious flaws: the threat to the retirement prospects of many small-business owners. The revised proposals strike a better balance between the government's "fairness" objective and the need for business owners to use their corporations to save for both future business and personal purposes.
To recap, the July proposals would have ended the refundability of taxes on passive investment income in Canadian private corporations when the owners took the…
Round 4 of the NAFTA negotiations ended in exceptional bitterness on Tuesday, with the United States presenting a series of deeply disturbing and unacceptable proposals. While the negotiating deadline was extended into early 2018, the talks are heading downhill and will likely hit the wall before then.
It's interesting that commentators are now talking about the need for a Plan B (or C or D) for Canada, when it should have been clear that these talks were on a perilous slope from the outset.
While policy wonks were once full of naive optimism about modernizing the North American free-trade agreement, a cold shower of realism would have doused that rosy glow. The problem is these negotiations were never born of common…
