Achi news desk-
Federal tax changes could soon make it difficult for people to find a family doctor, the Alberta Medical Association says.
Dr. Paul Parks, president of the advocacy group for the province’s doctors, says the changes will hamper doctors’ ability to save money for things like retirement and make it harder to keep family doctors in the country.
The federal government in its budget presented last month proposes to make two-thirds rather than half of capital gains—or profits made on the sale of assets—taxable.
The so-called inclusion rate increase would apply to capital gains over $250,000 for individuals, and all capital gains realized by corporations.
Ottawa says the changes will only affect the wealthy, but Parks says average-income family doctors will be left to pay the price.
“There’s a perception that doctors make millions of dollars a year. That’s not true,” Parks told CTV News Edmonton on Friday, adding that doctors are not eligible for retirement or pension plans as they set up corporations. professional to save money and pay. less tax.
He said Alberta family doctors annually bill “in the neighborhood of $340,000 a year.”
“We know their overheads and costs to run their business are over $250,000 a year, so maybe before taxes, they make $80,000 to $100,000 – and many make less – then they have to contribute to this professional corporation as a mechanism to try to save for their future, and now the government is taking some of that too.”
Liberal MP Randy Boissionnault, who represents the federal Edmonton Center riding, said that while he and the finance department are ready to discuss “the unintended consequences of the capital gains tax,” Ottawa wants to make sure “the tax system is fair.” and he insists that change only affects the wealthiest Canadians.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said the federal tax change is a step that has the potential to push doctors out of Canada, adding that she has asked her finance minister to urge Ottawa to completely eliminate the capital gains changes.
“We are in the process of trying to attract doctors. This is essentially telling doctors to ‘go work in America,'” Smith told CTV News on Friday.
“It has the potential to cost them a huge amount of money in their retirement savings. It’s not fair to do that, to change the rules in the middle of the river. I think they need to look at other ways to balance their budget .”
Chetan Dave, an economist at the University of Alberta, says that he does not see the benefit of the province’s top officials pressing federal taxes as they are out of their jurisdiction, adding that the change in federal policy that will take effect on June 25 has advantages . .
“Every policy is going to have costs and benefits. The advantage of this policy is that it equalizes tax treatment across sources of income at the top end of the distribution. At least, it does that,” Chetan told CTV News Edmonton, adding that the cost in the case of doctors is that most of them “especially specialists, are at the top end of the distribution, so they will be negatively affected.”
“Now, if you have a problem with the level of taxes, what the federal government or even provincial governments should really be doing is widening the brackets and lowering rates, but generally, the this policy is a bad policy from an efficiency point of view because it tax sources of income equally now at the top end of the distribution.”
With files from The Canadian Press
