Watch the video above: Provincial budget impacts Saskatoon businesses
SASKATOON – Alberta’s general corporate income tax rates sit at 10 per cent, two per cent lower than rates in Saskatchewan.
Saskatoon business owner Jim Nowakowski says that can make a difference.
“It accumulates along with all the other either advantages or disadvantages that we may or may not have,” he explained.
Nowakowski said many companies weigh their options and decide where to do business based on where they can save the most money.
“We have to try and look at every aspect of our business and our ways of being competitive for the work that takes place right here in Saskatchewan,” Nowakowski said.
BC, Alberta and Ontario have lower general corporate tax rates than Saskatchewan.
“We can grow, just not at the rate we want to grow at,” explained Kent Smith-Windsor, executive director of the Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce.
This week, the chamber of commerce put out its report card on the 2014 provincial budget, giving it a B-.
“To date, there’s no strategy to say, ‘here’s what we’re going to do to ensure that we remain completely competitive, so that investors, when they make an investment here, are doing it with the confidence that they’re going to get the best return,” said Smith-Windsor.
“The promise of reducing the corporate income tax from 12 down to 10 per cent – that’s still something that’s on our radar,” explained Ken Krawetz, Saskatchewan’s minister of finance.
“But we also said that we would do that – we would begin to do that – when our budget can sustain it.”
The province’s ministry of finance says it will revisit its promise to drop the corporate tax rate next year.
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