IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ubc/clssrn/clsrn_admin-2012-25.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Top Income Shares in Canada: Recent Trends and Policy Implications

Author

Listed:
  • Veall, Michael R.

Abstract

According to Canadian taxfiler data, over the last thirty years there has been a surge in the income shares of the top 1%, top 0.1% and top 0.01% of income recipients, even with longitudinal smoothing by individual using three- or five-year moving averages. Top shares fell in 2008 and 2009, but only by a fraction of the overall surge. Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario have much more pronounced surges than other provinces. Part of the Canadian surge is likely attributable to U.S. factors but a comprehensive explanation remains elusive. Even so, I draw implications for policies which might achieve some support from across the political spectrum, including the elimination of tax preferences that favour those with high incomes, the promotion of shareholder democracy and, to maintain Canada’s relatively high intergenerational mobility, continued wide accessibility to healthcare and education.

Suggested Citation

  • Veall, Michael R., 2012. "Top Income Shares in Canada: Recent Trends and Policy Implications," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2012-25, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 29 Oct 2012.
    • Handle: RePEc:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2012-25
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.clsrn.econ.ubc.ca/workingpapers/CLSRN%20Working%20Paper%20no.%20103%20-%20Veall.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Raj Chetty, 2009. "Is the Taxable Income Elasticity Sufficient to Calculate Deadweight Loss? The Implications of Evasion and Avoidance," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 1(2), pages 31-52, August.
    2. Peter Diamond & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "The Case for a Progressive Tax: From Basic Research to Policy Recommendations," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(4), pages 165-190, Fall.
    3. Thomas Philippon & Ariell Reshef, 2009. "Wages and Human Capital in the U.S. Financial Industry: 1909-2006," NBER Working Papers 14644, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Tedds, Lindsay M. & Compton, Ryan & Morrison, Caitlin & Nicholls, Christopher & Sandler, Daniel, 2012. "Learning to play by the disclosure rules: accuracy of insider reports in Canada, 1996-2010," MPRA Paper 39793, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Gruber, Jon & Saez, Emmanuel, 2002. "The elasticity of taxable income: evidence and implications," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 1-32, April.
    6. Xavier Gabaix & Augustin Landier, 2008. "Why has CEO Pay Increased So Much?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 49-100.
    7. Lawrence F. Katz & Kevin M. Murphy, 1992. "Changes in Relative Wages, 1963–1987: Supply and Demand Factors," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 107(1), pages 35-78.
    8. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.
    9. James B. Davies & Jie Zhang & Jinli Zeng, 2005. "Intergenerational Mobility under Private vs. Public Education," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 107(3), pages 399-417, September.
    10. Arturo Bris, 2000. "Do Insider Trading Laws Work?," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm162, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Jun 2005.
    11. Bebchuk, Lucian Arye & Fried, Jesse & Walker, David I, 2002. "Managerial Power and Rent Extraction in the Design of Executive Compensation," CEPR Discussion Papers 3558, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2014. "Optimal Taxation of Top Labor Incomes: A Tale of Three Elasticities," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 230-271, February.
    13. Miles Corak & Patrizio Piraino, 2011. "The Intergenerational Transmission of Employers," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 37-68, January.
    14. Austan Goolsbee, 2000. "What Happens When You Tax the Rich? Evidence from Executive Compensation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 108(2), pages 352-378, April.
    15. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    16. Miles Corak & Andrew Heisz, 1999. "The Intergenerational Earnings and Income Mobility of Canadian Men: Evidence from Longitudinal Income Tax Data," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 34(3), pages 504-533.
    17. Paul R. Krugman, 2008. "Trade and Wages, Reconsidered," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 39(1 (Spring), pages 103-154.
    18. Bingley, Paul & Corak, Miles & Westergård-Nielsen, Niels C., 2011. "The Intergenerational Transmission of Employers in Canada and Denmark," IZA Discussion Papers 5593, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Andrew Leigh, 2007. "How Closely Do Top Income Shares Track Other Measures of Inequality?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 117(524), pages 619-633, November.
    20. Feldstein, Martin, 1995. "The Effect of Marginal Tax Rates on Taxable Income: A Panel Study of the 1986 Tax Reform Act," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(3), pages 551-572, June.
    21. Robert J. Gordon & Ian Dew-Becker, 2008. "Controversies about the Rise of American Inequality: A Survey," NBER Working Papers 13982, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    22. Arturo Bris, 2005. "Do Insider Trading Laws Work?," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 11(3), pages 267-312, June.
    23. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2006. "The Evolution of Top Incomes: A Historical and International Perspective," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 200-205, May.
    24. Michael Kumhof & Romain Rancière & Pablo Winant, 2015. "Inequality, Leverage, and Crises," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 1217-1245, March.
    25. Randall Morck, 2010. "Shareholder Democracy in Canada," NBER Working Papers 16558, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    26. Nicole Fortin & David A. Green & Thomas Lemieux & Kevin Milligan & W. Craig Riddell, 2012. "Canadian Inequality: Recent Developments and Policy Options," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 38(2), pages 121-145, June.
    27. Lucian Bebchuk & Jesse Fried, 2002. "Power, rent extraction, and executive compensation," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 3(03), pages 23-28, October.
    28. Sillamaa, Mary-Anne & Veall, Michael R., 2001. "The effect of marginal tax rates on taxable income: a panel study of the 1988 tax flattening in Canada," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 341-356, June.
    29. William J. Mcnally & Brian F. Smith, 2003. "Do Insiders Play by the Rules?," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 29(2), pages 125-143, June.
    30. Acemoglu,Daron & Robinson,James A., 2009. "Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521671422.
    31. Feldstein, Martin, 1995. "The Effect of Marginal Tax Rates on Taxable Income: A Panel Study of the 1986 Tax Reform Act," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(3), pages 551-572, June.
    32. Anthony Atkinson & Thomas Piketty, 2007. "Top incomes over the twentieth century: A contrast between continental european and english-speaking countries," Post-Print halshs-00754859, HAL.
    33. Emmanuel Saez & Michael R. Veall, 2005. "The Evolution of High Incomes in Northern America: Lessons from Canadian Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 831-849, June.
    34. Fabbri, Francesca & Marin, Dalia, 2012. "What Explains the Rise in CEO Pay in Germany? A Panel Data Analysis for 1977-2009," IZA Discussion Papers 6420, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    35. Arturo Bris, 2000. "Do Insider Trading Laws Work?," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm162, Yale School of Management, revised 01 Jun 2005.
    36. Jensen, Michael C & Murphy, Kevin J, 1990. "Performance Pay and Top-Management Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(2), pages 225-264, April.
    37. Christian Dustmann & Johannes Ludsteck & Uta Schönberg, 2009. "Revisiting the German Wage Structure," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(2), pages 843-881.
    38. Thomas Lemieux, 2008. "The changing nature of wage inequality," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 21(1), pages 21-48, January.
    39. Jeffrey G. MacIntosh, 2012. "Tantalus Unbound: Government Policy and Innovation in Canada," SPP Research Papers, The School of Public Policy, University of Calgary, vol. 5(8), March.
    40. Björklund, Anders & Roine, Jesper & Waldenström, Daniel, 2008. "Intergenerational top income mobility in Sweden – A combination of equal opportunity and capitalistic dynasties," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 705, Stockholm School of Economics.
    41. Emmanuel Saez & Joel Slemrod & Seth H. Giertz, 2012. "The Elasticity of Taxable Income with Respect to Marginal Tax Rates: A Critical Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 3-50, March.
    42. Emmanuel Saez, 2004. "Reported Incomes and Marginal Tax Rates, 1960–2000: Evidence and Policy Implications," NBER Chapters, in: Tax Policy and the Economy, Volume 18, pages 117-174, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    43. Emmanuel Saez, 2001. "Using Elasticities to Derive Optimal Income Tax Rates," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(1), pages 205-229.
    44. Stefan Bach & Giacomo Corneo & Viktor Steiner, 2009. "From Bottom To Top: The Entire Income Distribution In Germany, 1992–2003," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(2), pages 303-330, June.
    45. J. B. Davies, 1979. "On The Size Distribution Of Wealth In Canada," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 25(3), pages 237-259, September.
    46. Corak, Miles & Piraino, Patrizio, 2010. "Intergenerational Earnings Mobility and the Inheritance of Employers," IZA Discussion Papers 4876, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    47. Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "The Economics of Superstars," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(5), pages 845-858, December.
    48. Luis Garicano & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2006. "Organization and Inequality in a Knowledge Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1383-1435.
    49. Atkinson, A. B. & Piketty, Thomas (ed.), 2007. "Top Incomes Over the Twentieth Century: A Contrast Between Continental European and English-Speaking Countries," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199286881, Decembrie.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez & Stefanie Stantcheva, 2014. "Optimal Taxation of Top Labor Incomes: A Tale of Three Elasticities," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(1), pages 230-271, February.
    2. Enrico Rubolino & Daniel Waldenström, 2019. "Trends and gradients in top tax elasticities: cross-country evidence, 1900–2014," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 26(3), pages 457-485, June.
    3. Carina Neisser, 2021. "The Elasticity of Taxable Income: A Meta-Regression Analysis [The top 1% in international and historical perspective]," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(640), pages 3365-3391.
    4. Emmanuel Saez & Joel Slemrod & Seth H. Giertz, 2012. "The Elasticity of Taxable Income with Respect to Marginal Tax Rates: A Critical Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(1), pages 3-50, March.
    5. Bartels, Charlotte & Waldenström, Daniel, 2021. "Inequality and top incomes," GLO Discussion Paper Series 959, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    6. Lockwood, Benjamin B. & Weinzierl, Matthew, 2016. "Positive and normative judgments implicit in U.S. tax policy, and the costs of unequal growth and recessions," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 30-47.
    7. Gianluca Grimalda & Alain Trannoy & Fernando Filgueira & Karl Ove Moene, 2020. "Egalitarian redistribution in the era of hyper-globalization," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 78(2), pages 151-184, April.
    8. Anthony B. Atkinson & Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2011. "Top Incomes in the Long Run of History," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 49(1), pages 3-71, March.
    9. Thomas Piketty & Emmanuel Saez, 2012. "Optimal Labor Income Taxation," NBER Working Papers 18521, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Florian Scheuer & Iván Werning, 2017. "The Taxation of Superstars," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(1), pages 211-270.
    11. Dana C. Andersen & Ramón López, 2019. "Do Tax Cuts Encourage Rent Seeking By Top Corporate Executives? Theory And Evidence," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 37(2), pages 219-235, April.
    12. Johannes Hermanus Kemp, 2020. "The elasticity of taxable income: New data and estimates for South Africa," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2020-29, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    13. Liam C. Malloy, 2016. "Do Lower Top Marginal Tax Rates Slow the Income Growth of Workers?," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 30(1), pages 61-87, March.
    14. Kristoffer Berg & Thor O. Thoresen, 2020. "Problematic response margins in the estimation of the elasticity of taxable income," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 27(3), pages 721-752, June.
    15. Emmanuel Saez, 2017. "Taxing the Rich More: Preliminary Evidence from the 2013 Tax Increase," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 31(1), pages 71-120.
    16. Michaël Sicsic, 2022. "Does labour income react more to income tax or means‐tested benefits reforms?," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(3), pages 291-319, September.
    17. Karel Mertens & José Luis Montiel Olea, 2018. "Marginal Tax Rates and Income: New Time Series Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(4), pages 1803-1884.
    18. Richard Burkhauser & Shuaizhang Feng & Stephen Jenkins & Jeff Larrimore, 2011. "Estimating trends in US income inequality using the Current Population Survey: the importance of controlling for censoring," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 9(3), pages 393-415, September.
    19. Lawson, Nicholas, 2019. "Taxing the job creators: Efficient taxation with bargaining in hierarchical firms," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 1-25.
    20. Frydman, Carola & Molloy, Raven S., 2011. "Does tax policy affect executive compensation? Evidence from postwar tax reforms," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(11), pages 1425-1437.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    income concentration; income polarization; Canadian personal income tax system; intergenerational mobility; corporate governance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • H31 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - Household
    • H24 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Personal Income and Other Nonbusiness Taxes and Subsidies

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ubc:clssrn:clsrn_admin-2012-25. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vivian Tran (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.clsrn.econ.ubc.ca/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.