Ministry of Finance and Corporate Relations Joy K. MacPhail, Minister	This electronic version is for informational purposes only. The printed version remains the official version.

Report E:
TAX EXPENDITURES

Introduction

A tax expenditure is defined as the reduction in tax revenues that results when government programs or benefits are provided through the tax system rather than reported as budgetary expenditures. Tax expenditures are usually made by offering special tax rates, exemptions, or tax credits to program beneficiaries. Governments introduce tax expenditures primarily to achieve social policy objectives such as transfers to lower income families or to promote economic development and job creation.

The major reason for reporting tax expenditures is to improve government accountability by providing a more complete picture of government spending. It is for this reason that British Columbia's major tax expenditures are presented in the following tables. Reporting tax expenditures is also consistent with recommendations contained in the 1994/95 Report of the Auditor General.

Tax expenditure reporting is relatively common. The Canadian federal government, the American federal government, some American states, several European national governments, and on occasion other Canadian provinces issue reports on tax expenditures. The British Columbia government has reported tax expenditures each year since 1995. The report provides estimates of the cost of tax expenditures for the 1998/99 fiscal year.

 
The Role of Tax Expenditure Programs

The main reason governments use the tax system to deliver programs is to reduce administration costs and to reduce compliance costs for recipients. In certain situations, the tax system allows intended beneficiaries to be readily identified from information that is already collected. In these cases, setting up a separate expenditure program would result in costly overlap and duplication of effort. An example is the provincial sales tax credit, which is delivered through the income tax system. If this were a direct provincial expenditure program, a provincial agency or office would have to be established to duplicate much of the work already done by Revenue Canada. In addition, it would require individuals to undergo a separate, time-consuming application process in order to qualify for the benefit.

There are, however, several drawbacks to tax expenditure programs. First, their overall cost receives less public scrutiny than is the case for spending programs because annual budget approvals are not typically required. Second, some tax expenditure programs confer the greatest benefits on those who pay the most taxes, which means that the major beneficiaries are often high income earners. Sales tax exemptions, for example, often provide a greater absolute benefit to those with higher incomes because they have more to spend on consumer products. This can run counter to the objective of incorporating progressiveness into the tax system. Finally, costs are often more difficult to control under a tax expenditure program because the benefits tend to be more open ended and enforcement is often more difficult than for spending programs.

 
Tax Expenditure Reporting

Three criteria were used to choose those features of the tax system that should be reported as tax expenditures. First, the emphasis is on tax reductions, exemptions and refunds that are close equivalents to spending programs. Under this approach, the focus is on items that would not be out of place on a list of spending programs. By implication, the list does not include tax measures designed to meet broad tax policy objectives such as improving fairness in the tax system, or measures designed to simplify the administration of the tax. The list also does not include items that are generally excluded from a particular tax base. An example is the non-taxation of most services under provincial sales taxes, which are primarily designed to apply to purchases of goods. Finally, tax remission orders are not included, because they are not equivalent to an expenditure program, but are granted on a case-by-case basis.

Second, revenues raised under provincial government authority that are turned over to agencies outside of government are not reported as tax expenditures in this report. This includes, for example, horse racing tax revenues transferred to the Racing Commission and fuel tax revenues transferred to the BC Transportation Financing Authority.

Third, smaller items of less than $2 million are not included. Where practical, smaller items have been presented together as an aggregate figure. For example, sales tax exemptions for farmers, fishers and aquaculturists are reported on a combined basis.

As a result, in this report, tax expenditures include major government programs delivered through the tax system, but do not include all items commonly considered to be tax expenditures in other reports. Many items, such as the basic personal income tax credit, are excluded because they are designed primarily to improve fairness in the tax system and are not comparable to spending under budgetary programs.

Future tax expenditure reports will continue to refine and clarify the criteria used to report provincial tax expenditures.

 
British Columbia Tax Expenditure Programs

The following tables report 1998/99 tax expenditure estimates.

Several new tax expenditures were introduced in Budget ’98. The major new tax expenditures introduced were corporate income tax credits for domestic and foreign film productions, exemptions from the social service tax for "1-800" and equivalent telephone services, and a motor fuel tax exemption for coloured fuel used by bona fide farmers.

For presentation purposes, British Columbia tax expenditures have been broken into three broad categories.

• Social and Income Transfer Programs (Table E1): These mainly include tax expenditures that are offered as part of the government's mix of health, education, housing and income transfer programs. Examples include the BC Family Bonus, the home owner grant, the sales tax exemption for school supplies and the income tax credit for medical expenses.

• Economic Development and Business Assistance Programs (Table E2): This category mainly includes tax preferences for farmers and small businesses and measures to encourage new investments.

• Environmental Protection Programs (Table E3): There are relatively few tax expenditures in this category because environmental protection is now generally based on the principle of "polluter pay." However, environmental tax expenditures include, for example, a sales tax exemption for bicycles and a fuel tax exemption for certain alternative fuels.

Each category has its own table of tax expenditure estimates. Within each table, the list of tax expenditures delivered through the income tax system has been separated into two sub-categories.

• Provincial Measures: This includes all major tax expenditures that are under provincial policy control.

• Federal Measures: British Columbia shares the cost of some federal income tax expenditure programs because, under the tax collection agreement between British Columbia and the federal government, the province has agreed to give up policy control of the income tax base in the interest of reducing administration and compliance costs and maintaining a consistent income tax system across the country.
  This means the province has no direct control over income tax preferences delivered through changes to the income tax base or in the calculation of basic federal tax. As a result, federal measures to provide tax relief for certain groups such as very low income individuals and students will automatically reduce provincial income tax revenues.

The personal income tax expenditures that have been included in the following tables cover a range of policy objectives, including support for charitable activities, health care and education. Meanwhile, most corporation income tax expenditures are intended to achieve economic development objectives.

The cost of individual tax expenditures cannot be added together to reach a total tax expenditure figure for two reasons. First, in some cases the programs interact with one another so that eliminating one program could increase or decrease the cost of another. Second, eliminating certain tax expenditure programs could change the choices taxpayers make, which in turn would affect the cost estimates.

TABLE E1 SOCIAL AND INCOME TRANSFER PROGRAMS

TABLE E2 ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND BUSINESS ASSISTANCE PROGRAMS

TABLE E3 ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION PROGRAMS

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