The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is calling on Ottawa to return the taxes collected from small and medium-sized businesses now that the federal carbon tax backstop is being imposed on NL, Nova Scotia and PEI.
CFIB Vice-President in Atlantic Canada, Louis-Philippe Gauthier, says in provinces where Ottawa administered the carbon tax, it committed to returning $1.62 billion in carbon taxes to businesses in the 2021 fall fiscal update.
He says as of today, no programming is in place to return those funds. “No tax relief, no rebates, no grants. Nothing,” he says.
He says an estimated $22 billion will have been collected by the end of the 2021-22 fiscal year through the federal carbon tax backstop, but since implementation of the federal carbon tax, Ottawa has only returned $106 million to small and medium-sized businesses through the Climate Action Incentive Fund SME Project Stream in provinces where it manages the tax.
Gauthier says those unreturned taxes are sitting in limbo, and that can’t continue to be the situation once the federal carbon tax backstop starts in this province, Nova Scotia and PEI.
He says a simple mechanism needs to be in place for small and medium-sized businesses once the federal government starts administering the tax in July.
