Tax Mix, Progressivity and Fairness
Canada's tax system has drifted away from capital and toward labour and consumption. Nobody has measured what that drift adds up to across all three orders of government at once.
Progressivity is usually assessed one tax at a time, at one level of government. That misses the thing people actually experience: a cumulative burden assembled from income tax, sales taxes, payroll deductions, and property tax, whose combined shape may look nothing like any of its parts. This theme builds the first integrated, multi-jurisdictional picture of that burden — and identifies where regressivity is embedded structurally rather than by design.
Methods
Microsimulation using Statistics Canada's Social Policy Simulation Database and Model (SPSD/M); Suits indices to measure specific and overall progressivity; effective and marginal tax rate analysis for representative taxpayers; reform simulation to test what would actually change incidence.
Projects
Whether residential property assessment — the base for municipal property tax — is systematically regressive, using linked assessment and household data. Alberta and Ontario analyses are complete; British Columbia is in progress.
Extending the analysis from a single instrument to the full federal–provincial–municipal tax mix, with attention to how cumulative incidence differs across intersectional groups.
