“Fiscal autonomy” of Quebec | QS reiterates its demand for a single tax return

At the dawn of tax season, Québec solidaire reiterated on Sunday its request to the Legault government to implement a single tax return in order to reduce the “bureaucratic duplication between Revenu Québec and the Canada Revenue Agency” which is costly every year.

“Each year when tax season comes, citizens and businesses waste time and money filling out two declarations when it is absolutely not necessary. […] Keeping the system in place is like throwing our public money out the window,” insisted MP Sol Zanetti, the party’s sovereignty official.

Québec solidaire asserts, based on calculations by the Institute for Research on People’s Self-Determination and National Independence (IRAI), that the cost of “administrative duplication between Revenu Québec and the Canada Revenue Agency is costing us nearly 425 million per year”.

MP Zanetti says that a single tax return would also and above all mean “less paperwork, less expenses and more simplicity for everyone” in the end. More broadly, his party also believes that the measure would allow “protection of the integrity of the process of automatic collection of support payments”.

Lack of will ?

Mr. Zanetti denounces that the Legault government lacks will in this file. “François Legault’s failure in the health transfer file is further proof that we need to maintain a balance of power vis-à-vis Ottawa,” he says, arguing that “ the best way to maintain” this balance of power is to have the autonomy to fight against tax evasion, “which Ottawa abandoned by signing treaties with tax havens”.

As early as 2015, then in opposition, the CAQ of François Legault had shown itself in favor of the establishment of a single tax return. In the process, Liberal Prime Minister Philippe Couillard studied the possibility of moving forward by the end of his term, but nothing has come to a head. The Parti Québécois also supports the implementation of the measure, as does the Bloc Québécois in Ottawa.

The CAQ has also reiterated its request in 2019 to Justin Trudeau. The latter had retorted that the CAQ government was putting jobs at risk. “We are always ready to work to simplify the lives of Quebecers and all Canadians, but we are not aligned with the Government of Quebec on the idea of ​​a single provincial tax report,” said Mr. Trudeau. .

It should be remembered that Quebec is the only Canadian province to file two income tax returns since Prime Minister Maurice Duplessis introduced provincial income tax almost 70 years ago, in February 1954.

With The Canadian Press