Le Budget 2010 du Québec: Effets sur la taille et la progressivité du fardeau fiscal

Tax measures announced in the latest Quebec budget strike a balance between good economic outcomes and attention to fairness in how tax burdens are shared. The author assesses Quebec’s budget measures according to their impacts on the tax burden and how well provincial taxes match citizens’ abilities to pay. Despite the fact that the new tax measures are imperfectly geared to income, the alternative of confining the burden of required tax increases to fewer, higher income individuals would carry a high economic cost. Quebecers are already among the highest taxed in the country while Quebec’s tax system is the most progressive. The budget proposals will raise taxes, widening the gap with the rest of Canada, yet the tax system will remain more “progressive” than that of most other provinces. All in all, the budget measures are a reasonable compromise between distributional fairness and sound economic outcomes.