I teach economics at UBC Vancouver School of Economics @ubcVSE.
Oct 5 • 16 tweets • 4 min read
Just FYI, this is not possible unless BC abandoned the tax collection agreement with Ottawa, since BC must use the federal definition of income and can't just change stuff like this.
I know no one likes a nerdy tax scold.
But I don't like election promises made of fairy dust.
BC does have the constitutional right to collect its own income tax. A future BC govt can abandon the tax collection agreement. But then we'd have to set up our own income tax system, double up on tax auditors and spend a bunch of money to duplicate what already exists.
Jun 13 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I've seen a few opinion pieces criticizing the capital gains tax increase for those with >$250K of gains.
They note a few problems here; a shortcoming there. Fair enough---no real-world tax measure will be perfect.
But there's a "tell" in what these pieces *don't* say....
If you read the pieces criticizing the capital gains increase for those with >$250K of gains, what they *don't* do is to propose an alternative tax measure that will push back on inequality.
They don't propose any because they don't care about inequality. It's that simple.
Apr 19 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
Last tweets of the morning: reading stuff on here and reading news websites you might start to get the impression that higher taxes on high earners are not popular.
The polling on this is actually pretty stunning....see the following from @abacusdataca.
Let me preface this by saying that popular opinion is one input to a technical topic like taxes. People have feels, but those feels are often at odds with technical or economic realities.
But if your're literally talking about popularity then you should look at the polls, yeah?
Apr 19 • 14 tweets • 6 min read
Some research on capital gains, a breakfast thread....
From the National Tax Journal, by me. I look at the average tax rate across the income distribution. I note how important capital gains is to shaping these ATRs at the top.
Starting to read the budget now. Unorganized tweeting commencing....
budget.canada.ca/2024/home-accu…
Such an important point here about immigration and GDP per capita. Young immigrants ding the dominator in the short run, it's true. But young immigrants add productive capacity to the economy which grows the numerator within a few years. We should aim for long-run GDP/N !
Nov 22, 2023 • 24 tweets • 7 min read
It was FES day yesterday!
Let's talk about fiscal sustainability....
The question of fiscal sustainability looks at whether the trajectory of a country is sustainable without large fiscal adjustments (e.g. tax increases or spending cuts).
Fiscal sustainability analysis does *not* assess the quality of spending.
Mar 31, 2023 • 4 tweets • 4 min read
Lots of interest in the longevity analysis featured by @jburnmurdoch. It is fascinating.
There is Canadian work on this that you might also find interesting: by me and @tammyschirle.
You can find it (including ungated versions) here:
We want stable longrun debt/GDP. We should be glad that govts in 1990s and 2000s lowered our debt/GDP to give us fiscal room to handle the COVID shock.
We should do the same now. But: how quickly?...
Mar 29, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Here is debt-GDP, which is the measure economists use to measure debt sustainability.
It slopes down, which is a good indication that there will not be a need for tax increases to afford future public debt payments.
In other words, 'fiscal crisis' lol no.
Here is public debt service to GDP.
We are likely to settle in at around 1.5% to 1.6% of GDP, which is...near historic lows.
Again, for anyone looking for signs of an incipient fiscal crisis....uh, no.
