The Minden Brief: Spring 2017 - Budget 2017 Shots Across The Bow – And Some Direct Hits…

The lead-up to the March 22, 2017 Federal Budget ("Budget") was filled with fear and trepidation that the Trudeau Liberal Government ("Government") would use the Budget to grab more taxes from Canadians to pay for their platform promises. In particular, in advance of the Budget, there was concern that capital gains inclusion rates were likely to increase significantly from the 50% inclusion rate to 75% or possibly even more.

The good news for taxpayers...at least for now... is that the Budget did not make any particularly significant tax rate changes at all.¹ Unfortunately, that is not to say that the Budget was a tax non-event.

Shots across the bow

Tax professionals are always worried about something. It seems to be an occupational hazard or perhaps a deeply ingrained socialized character flaw. Perhaps it is that we've adopted Bruce Cockburn's song "The Trouble with Normal (is it always gets worse)" as our theme song – or maybe that's just me. In any case, it