An Evaluation of the Working Income Tax Benefit

William Scarth and Lei Tang

Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population Research Reports from McMaster University

Abstract: The federal government has implemented an earned income tax credit – what it has called the Working Income Tax Benefit – in the 2007 Budget. Edmund Phelps has argued that the earned income tax credit in the United States should be replaced with an employment subsidy. This paper assesses the importance of Phelps’ concern, and related issues, for Canada. This debate is important for two reasons: the plight of those blocked by the "welfare wall" is dire, and the entire community has an interest in lower structural unemployment in an environment that involves an aging population and an accompanying labour shortage.

Keywords: earned income tax credit; employment subsidy; open economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E25 F41 I38 J38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32 pages
Date: 2007-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/qsep/p/qsep424.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/qsep/p/qsep424.pdf [302 Moved Temporarily]--> https://socialsciences.mcmaster.ca/qsep/p/qsep424.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mcm:qseprr:424

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Quantitative Studies in Economics and Population Research Reports from McMaster University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().