Tag

tax policy

2 articles

AccountabilityJune 2, 20267 min read
Ontario's PCs Just Defeated a Bill to Remove HST From Groceries. Here's the Math on Why Sales Tax Hits the Middle Class Hardest.
On May 27, 2026, the Doug Ford Progressive Conservative government in Ontario voted down Bill 113, the Fair Prices and Tax-Free Groceries Act, 2026, introduced by NDP MPP Tom Rakocevic. The bill would have removed the entire 13% Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) from all food and drink sold in Ontario — including the prepared meals, deli food, snacks, restaurant meals, and many packaged products that currently carry HST (most basic groceries are already zero-rated). The bill also proposed ending the secret lease covenants that allow major grocery chains like Loblaws and Sobeys to block competing stores from opening nearby. The Ontario Liberal Party has a narrower proposal: remove the provincial portion of HST (the 8% provincial share) from prepared food purchases under $20, costing approximately $500 million per year in foregone revenue, partly offset by a corporate-profit surtax and a high-income tax surtax. This article walks the defeated bill, the structural incidence of HST on Ontario households, the GST/HST credit and why it does not reach the middle class, and the honest caveats — including the fact that universally consumed goods cut in tax also benefit the wealthy in absolute-dollar terms.
LegislationMay 26, 20266 min read
The CRTC Just Tripled What Netflix Owes Canada — From 5% to 15%. Is It a Tax? Here's the Honest Answer.
The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) finalized a decision on May 21, 2026 requiring foreign streaming services with more than $25 million in annual Canadian revenue to contribute 15% of those Canadian revenues to Canadian-content production funds. The rate is up from the 5% interim rate the CRTC announced in 2024. The contribution is imposed under the Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11, 2023). Affected services include Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, and Paramount+; Spotify is excluded because it is classified as audio-only rather than audiovisual. The federal government characterizes the requirement as a "regulatory contribution," not a tax — the contribution money flows to designated funds for Canadian English, French, and Indigenous content production, not to federal general revenue. Streamers (with backing from the U.S. trade representative) characterize it as a tax that will inevitably be passed to consumers through higher subscription prices. Both framings are defensible. The Constitutional law of taxation distinguishes between taxes (compulsory payments to general government revenue) and regulatory charges (compulsory payments tied to a regulated scheme); the 15% contribution is the second category, not the first. Functionally — for a household paying more for Netflix because of it — the two are indistinguishable. The article walks through who pays, who collects, where the money goes, the timeline, the legal challenges still pending in Federal Court, and the consumer-cost impact analysts expect.

Ontario's PCs Just Defeated a Bill to Remove HST From Groceries. Here's the Math on Why Sales Tax Hits the Middle Class Hardest.

On May 27, 2026, the Doug Ford Progressive Conservative government in Ontario voted down Bill 113, the Fair Prices and Tax-Free Groceries Act, 2026, introduced by NDP MPP Tom Rakocevic. The bill would have removed the entire 13% Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) from all food and drink sold in Ontario — including the prepared meals, deli food, snacks, restaurant meals, and many packaged products that currently carry HST (most basic groceries are already zero-rated). The bill also proposed ending the secret lease covenants that allow major grocery chains like Loblaws and Sobeys to block competing stores from opening nearby. The Ontario Liberal Party has a narrower proposal: remove the provincial portion of HST (the 8% provincial share) from prepared food purchases under $20, costing approximately $500 million per year in foregone revenue, partly offset by a corporate-profit surtax and a high-income tax surtax. This article walks the defeated bill, the structural incidence of HST on Ontario households, the GST/HST credit and why it does not reach the middle class, and the honest caveats — including the fact that universally consumed goods cut in tax also benefit the wealthy in absolute-dollar terms.

The CRTC Just Tripled What Netflix Owes Canada — From 5% to 15%. Is It a Tax? Here's the Honest Answer.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) finalized a decision on May 21, 2026 requiring foreign streaming services with more than $25 million in annual Canadian revenue to contribute 15% of those Canadian revenues to Canadian-content production funds. The rate is up from the 5% interim rate the CRTC announced in 2024. The contribution is imposed under the Online Streaming Act (Bill C-11, 2023). Affected services include Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV+, and Paramount+; Spotify is excluded because it is classified as audio-only rather than audiovisual. The federal government characterizes the requirement as a "regulatory contribution," not a tax — the contribution money flows to designated funds for Canadian English, French, and Indigenous content production, not to federal general revenue. Streamers (with backing from the U.S. trade representative) characterize it as a tax that will inevitably be passed to consumers through higher subscription prices. Both framings are defensible. The Constitutional law of taxation distinguishes between taxes (compulsory payments to general government revenue) and regulatory charges (compulsory payments tied to a regulated scheme); the 15% contribution is the second category, not the first. Functionally — for a household paying more for Netflix because of it — the two are indistinguishable. The article walks through who pays, who collects, where the money goes, the timeline, the legal challenges still pending in Federal Court, and the consumer-cost impact analysts expect.