Just like last year’s budget, which introduced the Tax-Free Savings Account and provided plenty of grist for the blogger mill, this year’s budget is promising to be an interesting affair. The budget will contain significant deficit spending; that much is clear. In fact, over $13-billion worth of specific plans have already been announced by various ministers.
However, we’ll have to await the actual budget for the interesting bits that will directly affect our pocket books. In an interview with John Ivison of The National Post, the Prime Minister strongly hinted that the budget might include broad-based tax cuts:
Q: That sounds very much like a tax cut?
A: I’m not laying out any specific– we’re looking at a range of specific spending and tax measures of all kinds. I’m not committing to you any particular measure, but the principles are clear. We have to help the vulnerable and those affected most severely by the downturn. But you can’t do that and leave the middle class to fend for itself. A program like that would not be successful.
The platform that the Conservatives ran on in the last election would be another good place to look for likely personal finance measures. But, the platform, unlike the one before it, which promised a 2% cut to the GST and the Universal Child Care Benefit, had modest promises such as a $5,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers.
It would be interesting if the Conservatives again reprise an older platform, as they did with the TFSA and completely phase out the middle tax bracket. Don’t count on it though. The Conservatives have now mastered the art of making “targeted” tax cuts — an euphemism for making our tax code more complicated than it already is. In that spirit, perhaps we will see a brand new tax credit for students learning plumbing in trade school to purchase monkey wrenches in tomorrow’s budget!
