Thursday Morning Links

This and that for your Thursday reading...

- David MacDonald's CCPA report on the complete lack of any return on a decade of corporate tax cuts is worth a read in full. But his blog post offers the ideal summary:

I took Canada’s biggest public companies, those on the S&P/TSX Composite and tracked them over the past decade to see how their taxes and profits changed. At the same time, I also tracked how many employees they had and therefore the number of jobs they created. These are the companies that benefit the most from corporate tax cuts because they declare the largest profits.

There were 198 companies that had data from 2000 through 2009. What readers should find shocking is just how dramatic the transformation in corporate taxation has been in the past decade. The effective tax rate that these successful companies have paid has been cut in half. Imagine if as an individual your personal income taxes had been cut in half over the past decade, well that’s what happened in corporate Canada.

With such a dramatic change, it should be no surprise that compared to 2000, profits are up 50% while taxes paid are down 20%. The tab for corporate tax cuts for just these 200 companies is $12 billion a year in lost provincial and federal revenues. To give readers a sense of scale, that much money could buy us a national $10/day childcare program and wipe out poverty among seniors with money left over.

The bargain that Canada made with its most profitable corporations was that if we give them dramatic tax cuts they’ll use that money to create jobs. We’ve cut the cheque, worth $12 billion a year in 2009, so did we get the jobs?

The Canadian economy as a whole has increased the number of jobs by 6% since 2005. However, the 200 companies that are receiving the $12 billion a year tax break have only increased their job numbers by 5%, in effect they are pulling down the average.

Instead of creating jobs with those billions, they have merely increased their profits or are sitting on the cash. Canadians should expect vastly more for $12 billion a year.

- The hope for the current election is that Edmonton-Strathcona will be joined by one or more other Edmonton ridings in turfing the out-of-touch Cons. But that quibble as to the state of other Alberta races aside, Josh Wingrove provides an entertaining read on Linda Duncan's work to win her seat once again.

- Meanwhile, Joel-Denis Bellavance notes that the NDP's ascent in Quebec continues, including a strong second-place showing at 24% in the latest Angus Reid poll.

- Finally, while I don't agree with all of Mike Moffatt's proposals, they certainly look to offer a far wider range of policy ideas than we're seeing from a lot of parties in the current election campaign. And indeed, I'd be curious to see a leaders' debate focusing in on some of the ideas raised - particularly the merits of a GAI, and the harm done by the Cons' boutique tax credits.