Should Canada’s Capital Gains Taxes be Increased or Reformed?

Since being introduced in 1972, taxable capital gains in Canada have been based on partial inclusion of nominal capital gains (i.e., the difference between sale and purchase prices). The inclusion rates have varied between 50 and 75 percent but have been 50 percent since 2000. Recently, there has been discussion of increasing capital gains taxes by increasing the inclusion rate (back to) 75 percent. In this paper, I argue that the capital gains tax is a poorly designed and inequitable tax and so, rather than make another ad hoc adjustment to the inclusion rate, a superior option is to reform capital gains taxation by indexing for inflation so as to measure real capital gains (i.e., the increase in purchasing power that is realized). The Toronto Stock Exchange Composite Index and the index of consumer prices are used to determine 40 and 50 year sequences of the differences between real and nominal measures of capital gains under both 50 and 75 percent inclusion rates for an index asset held for 20, 10 and 5 years. The work demonstrates that taxable capital gains are over and under assessed considerably relative to real capital gains. For example, over the period 1996 to 2020, differences between the taxable capital gains under a 75 percent inclusion rate and real gains would have been about 20 percent for a 10-year hold and about 33 percent for a 5 year hold. The results demonstrate the varying disparities between real gains and those under partial inclusion. Such disparities imply wide differences in effective tax rates and so inequities among investors, over time and with other taxpayers. This evidence argues persuasively that Canada’s capital gains taxation should abandon partial inclusion and turn to serious reform by indexing for inflation.