Quebec Budget 2024 | What’s moving in your wallet

Six measures that have a financial impact on taxpayers

Smokers taxed

Since midnight Tuesday evening, a carton of 200 cigarettes costs $2 more. A second increase of $2 will hit smokers on January 6, 2025. Ultimately, the tax on tobacco products will increase from $37.80 to $41.80 per cartridge. According to budget documents, the cartridge was sold in Quebec at an average price of $139.01 as of 1^er March 2024. The current Quebec tax of $37.80 is the lowest in Canada. The increase is estimated to bring in 40 million this year, 300 million by 2029.

Drive green stopped

Established in 2012, the Roulez vert program which offered subsidies for the purchase of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles will be abolished on 1^er January 2027. “The electric vehicle market is progressing towards maturity”, we explain, while one in 5 new vehicles sold is now electric. Subsidies will gradually decrease from 1^er January 2025: those for electric vehicles will, for example, drop from $7,000 to $4,000. The $600 grant for the installation of home charging stations is saved.

Improved retirement

For 75,000 seniors, the Girard budget should correct an anomaly dating back a quarter of a century. Disability pension recipients have access to an early retirement pension from the age of 60, but this is reduced up to a maximum of 32%. When these seniors reach the age of 65, the disability pension is no longer paid while the retirement pension remains reduced. This situation will be corrected from 1^er January 2025, allowing these seniors to have a full retirement pension. The measure will cost Quebec 135 million.

$1 Cars

How can we explain, as Revenu Québec reports, that 130,000 used vehicles were sold for $1 or less in 2022? This is clearly tax avoidance, it is explained, since the price of vehicles more than 9 years old is not recorded in the reference guide, the Weekly Valuation Guide. The seller and buyer can then declare the price of their choice and avoid paying Quebec sales tax. The proposed solution: the Guide will now go back 14 years.

Pension, be careful

The “major recalcitrants”, as they are called in the budget, those who refuse to pay alimony and whose wages cannot be garnished could still be stuck: Quebec intends to suspend their driving licenses. The terms of this measure, which will notably require modifications to the Law facilitating the payment of alimony and the Highway Safety Code, are still unclear. This dissuasive measure, it is indicated, is already applied in the majority of American states and in other Canadian provinces.

Disabled children

Quebec wants to simplify, sometimes correct and update the criteria for obtaining the Disabled Child Supplement, a monthly amount of $229. Descriptions of significant disabilities, which date back more than two decades, will be reviewed in particular to take into account developments in medical knowledge. Children under the age of two can also now be entitled to the Supplement for Disabled Children Requiring Exceptional Care (SEHNSE), a monthly allowance of up to $1,158.