J. Rhys Kesselman

Jonathan Rhys Kesselman joined Simon Fraser University’s School of Public Policy in 2004, where he is a professor and holds the Canada Research Chair in Public Finance. From 1972 to 2003 he was a professor of economics at the University of British Columbia, and from 1992 to 2003 he served as director of the UBC Centre for Research on Economic and Social Policy. He was director and principal investigator of the SSHRC/MCRI project on "Equality/Security/Community." He has a B.A. (Hon.) in economics from Oberlin College and a Ph.D. in economics from M.I.T.

Professor Kesselman is a frequent commentator on issues of public finance, taxation, and economic policy. He has written widely on topics in tax policy, income security, employment policy, and social insurance finance, including monographs on Financing Canadian Unemployment Insurance (1983), Rate Structure and Personal Taxation: Flat Rate or Dual Rate? (1990); General Payroll Taxes: Economics, Politics, and Design (1997); and a co-edited volume for the UBC Press, Dimensions of Inequality in Canada (2006); studies for the Institute for Research on Public Policy: Flat Taxes, Dual Taxes, Smart Taxes (2000), Tax Design for a Northern Tiger (2004), and Income Splitting and the Joint Taxation of Couples (2008); Expanding Canada Pension Plan Retirement Benefits (2010); Challenges in Shifting Canadian Taxation toward Consumption (2014); a study for the Caledon Institute of Social Policy: Family Tax Cuts: How Inclusive a Family? (2014); and two studies for the Broadbent Institute assessing the TFSA structure and contribution limits (2015).  His research also appears in numerous articles in scholarly journals and volumes.

Professor Kesselman’s research has been recognized by the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Professorial Fellowship in Economic Policy (1985), the Canadian Tax Foundation’s Douglas J. Sherbaniuk Distinguished Research Award (2002 and 2015), and the Canadian Economics Association’s Doug Purvis Memorial Prize for Canadian economic policy research (1998 and 2007). He is a Research Fellow with the C.D. Howe Institute and a Fellow of the Broadbent Institute and serves on the editorial boards of Canadian Public Policy and the Canadian Tax Journal.

His research interests in recent years include the economics of tax avoidance and evasion, reform of the GST and provincial sales taxes, the National Child Benefit, flat taxes, personal and business tax reform, federal and provincial payroll taxes, BC fiscal and taxation policies, the distributional impacts of taxes, mandatory retirement, taxation of the family and income splitting, the basic income guarantee, expansion of Canada Pension Plan retirement benefits, and reform of the Tax Free Savings Account.