Carbon Tax Not Fairly Shared With Small Business

Despite collecting billions in carbon tax revenues, the Canadian government has returned less than one per cent of the promised proceeds to small businesses, says the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB). On top of that, the government is proceeding with a carbon tax hike of 23 per cent to $65 per tonne on April 1. In its ‘Fueling Unfairness: Carbon Pricing and Small Businesses’ report, CFIB is calling on the federal government to reconsider the federal carbon pricing backstop. It says small businesses contribute significantly to the federal carbon tax, but they don't get the same amount back as individuals and households do through rebates. In fact, while CFIB's calculations estimate that small firms pay close to half of the carbon tax revenue collected by government, only 0.17 per cent in all carbon tax revenues were returned to them between the 2019 and 2020 and 2022 and 2023 fiscal years. Between those years, the federal government raised $22 billion in carbon pricing revenues. With the carbon tax increasing to $65 per tonne, about $8.2 billion is expected to be collected from the carbon tax alone in 2022 and 2023.