Correction: Mulcair first introduced the tax cut in January, not today. The story has been updated to reflect that.
Tom Mulcair re-announced Tuesday that if elected, he will cut the small business tax rate by two percentage points.
Mulcair originally announced the tax cut in January, and while he spent a portion of his Tuesday morning press conference criticizing Conservative leader Stephen Harper’s handling of the economy, Harper implemented a similar tax cut in April after voting against it in February.
The two plans do differ slightly. Specifically, Mulcair is promising to cut the small business tax rate from 11 per cent to nine by 2017 – a cut of one percentage point in each of the first two years of his mandate.
“Small businesses like the one that we’re visiting here today, now account for 30 per cent of our country’s GDP and employ nearly eight million Canadians,” Mulcair said while standing in front of a Hamilton business.
On April 23 of this year, the Harper government announced mostly the same thing – a cut to the small business tax rate from 11 per cent to nine after having brought it down to its current rate in 2008.
The Conservatives, however, would do it over four years – a cut of half a percentage point each year.
Both parties agreed on how many people their policy would help – nearly 700,000 across Canada.
When asked for a comment about the NDP’s plan to cut the small business tax, the Conservatives suggested the NDP would also be hiking payroll taxes across the country.
“Canadians will not be fooled by Thomas Mulcair’s plan to impose a job killing payroll tax on all workers and employers that will set our economy back,” according to a statement from the Conservatives. “Due to measures Prime Minister Harper has introduced, small business taxes will be almost 50% lower, which will allow businesses to create jobs and economic growth.”
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