Five options for how the proposed capital gains inclusion rate increase could play out

financialpost.com:

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland says she will deliver the overdue fall economic statement on Monday, just a day before the House of Commons’ last sitting day of Dec. 17. Why the delay? I’m not buying the lame stated excuse that filibusters have been the cause. Instead, this is a continuing display of this government’s overall incompetence.

Despite this, I look forward to seeing an update on how bad the federal deficit is and what games have been played to sugarcoat our country’s ugly fiscal mess. Put me on record as saying the estimated deficit will be much larger than earlier predicted.

I’m also hopeful that we won’t see any more so-called gifts being handed out. Our country cannot afford them. Instead, we need a basket of pro-growth and productivity measures to counter our weak economic performance and what is coming from the United States. Such measures should include massive and meaningful spending cuts.

Unfortunately, we will not see any of those measures in the statement. Instead, we’ll continue to see more of the performative theatre that this government is obsessed with.

With respect to taxes, I hope we get an update on the status of the capital gains inclusion rate proposal. With only a week before the House of Commons shuts down for the year, it’s fair to say that 2024 will not be the year that this measure gets passed.

There are a number of options available to the government to deal with the capital gains proposal. The first is that it will see the light and abandon it. That won’t happen. It has vigorously defended the proposal as being necessary for the “rich” to pay more and to deal with intergenerational “fairness.” To abandon this nonsensical messaging now would be too much of an about-face for this