OTTAWA — Sometimes a tax refund is just a tax refund.
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Just hours after The Toronto Sun published a story about the Trudeau government’s controversial plan to tax carbon tax rebates for small businesses, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tweeted the feds won’t be taking a piece of those payments.
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) this week took exception to the Department of Finance’s classification of the long awaited $2.5-billion small business carbon tax rebate as taxable government assistance. As a result, it would be taxed, the CFIB was told.
“The Canada Carbon Rebate is delivering $2.5 billion directly to small businesses,” Freeland posted to X Tuesday. “This rebate will be tax free.”
Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB,) told The Toronto Sun on Tuesday that while they were initially told by Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) that the rebate would be modelled after the tax-free Canada Carbon Rebate, they were later told by the Department of Finance that the payout to qualified businesses would instead be considered taxable government assistance.
A source in Freeland’s office told the Sun that the Finance Minister’s tweet was a clarification, and not the government walking back an unpopular decision.
During this year’s budget presentation, the Trudeau Liberals promised to “directly return over $2.5 billion in proceeds from the price on pollution” to around 600,000 small and medium businesses.
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