Immediate Expensing Rules: Good Tax Policy?

Over the course of the last two federal budgets (April 16, 2024 and November 4, 2025), the rules for claiming Capital Cost Allowance (CCA) have been uncertain. The proposal to extend immediate expensing rules for certain acquired assets were paused for over a year and then re-introduced in a series of four complex measures which together with new rules for Scientific Research and Experimental Development have become known as the “Productivity Super-Deduction”.  A backdrop appears below. The key question: will this complexity be effective as an economic stimulator?   

"Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do." Pope John XXIII

Losing a job—especially unexpectedly—can be a difficult life event. You should know how to keep as much as possible of a lump sum that might come your way. The taxes on this lifeline can rob you of precious resources while you look for new work or arrange for your retirement income. There are also investment planning decisions to be made.

If you were subject to the OAS clawback on your 2015 tax return, your OAS cheques starting July 2016 will each be reduced by 1/12th of that clawback amount. But there is a way to reduce the recovery tax and increase your monthly OAS cheque.

A bright spot in economic news:  farmers are thriving!  Farming is no easy way to make a living, subject as it is to the whims of weather, disease, currency fluctuations, and more. So it’s good to hear from a Statistics Canada report published on May 25, 2016, that Canadian farmers are doing better than one might think.

When a depreciable asset is disposed of and the result is a negative balance in the CCA class, that negative balance is normally included in the taxpayer’s income (as recapture of CCA) in the year of disposition.

Planning for retirement is an old issue, but now there’s a new take on it: pre-retirement planning.  In the past, the focus was on how much pension income was needed to replace actively earned income from employment, to live comfortably until death. But these days retirement is anything but traditional and with employer pensions on the decline, especially defined benefit plans, many other factors must be taken into account when planning for life after work.