Canada provides persons from age 65 with a Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS, currently C$871.86 a month for a single person), but claws it back at the steep rate of 50% from other income. There is no exempt amount, and some provinces add to this. The provincial claw back in Alberta, for example, is 18%, bringing the total rate of claw back to 68%.
Canada also provides residents from age 65 with an Old Age Pension (currently a maximum of $585 a month for a single person) that is reduced (clawed back) at the rate of 15% from taxable income in excess of $74,788 a year, so is equivalent to an increase in income tax of 15 percentage points for high income older persons until the full Old Age Pension is recovered. Receipt of the Old Age Pension does not count as income for a GIS.
Why do government policymakers in Canada implicitly tax the income of older persons at a higher rate than of younger persons with the same incomes? Perhaps they do not realize that means tests (clawbacks) are taxes. Simultaneously, though, the government has programmes in place to encourage workers to save for old age, to build up a retirement fund that is subjected to a high rate of taxation in old age. This puzzles me.
Canada also mandates contributions to a state pension, known as Canada Pension Plan. Canadian actuary Robert Brown, in a useful article, explains why increasing the contributions to (and benefits from) this plan harms contributors with low incomes, because it causes them to lose benefits that they would otherwise receive from the Guaranteed Income Supplement. He doesn’t mention this, but taxpayers with high incomes also lose benefits from expansion of the noncontributory Old Age Pension. No doubt he assumes (most likely correctly) that those with high incomes can look after themselves! Also, $585 a month is small change for someone with an income in excess of $6,200 a month. (more…)