Designing a Basic Income Guarantee for Canada

Robin Boadway, Katherine Cuff and Kourtney Koebel

No 274697, Queen's Economics Department Working Papers from Queen's University - Department of Economics

Abstract: We propose mechanism for implementing a two-stage harmonized Basic Income Guarantee with federal and provincial components. In Stage One, the federal government replaces its refundable and nonrefundable tax credits with an income-tested basic income delivered through the income tax system. The reform is revenue-neutral. In Stage Two, each province decides whether to implement a provincial basic income guarantee that is harmonized with the federal one but allows province-specific basic income levels. The provincial basic income replaces provincial refundable and nonrefundable tax credits as well as welfare and disability transfers, and is also revenue-neutral. All social services and contributory social insurance programs remain intact. An illustrative calculation using Statistical Canada’s SPSD/M model shows the financial feasibility of a national BIG of $20,000 per adult adjusted for family size with a benefit reduction rate of 30%.

Keywords: Financial Economics; Public Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 32
Date: 2016-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pbe
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/274697/files/qed_wp_1371.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Designing A Basic Income Guarantee For Canada (2016)
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:ags:quedwp:274697

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.274697

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Queen's Economics Department Working Papers from Queen's University - Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().