THE JAMES HAUSMAN TAX LAW & POLICY WORKSHOP

presents

Frances Woolley
Carleton University, Department of Economics

Liability without control:
The curious case of pension income splitting

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

12:30 - 2:00

Flavelle Dining Room

Faculty of Law, University of Toronto

78 Queen's Park

Canadian pensioners are now allowed to split income from an employer pension and, for people 65 and older, income from a registered retirement income fund, RRSP annuity and some other forms of annuities. In this commentary I argue that pension income splitting has no efficiency benefits, while involving significant revenue sacrifices. From an equity perspective, pension income splitting benefits some of the least needy groups in Canadian society and inhibits equality between men and women. Administratively, pension income splitting as currently proposed is inferior to a number of other methods of achieving the same distributional outcomes, as it imposes tax liabilities on the lower-income spouse, who may have no means to pay those liabilities. There were better ways of achieving the same goals, such as allowing for retroactive conversion of personal to spousal RRSPs or transferring basic rate tax room as opposed to tax liabilities. There are also better ways of spending money on older Canadians, for example, expanding the reach of Guaranteed Income Supplement.

Frances Woolley is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Carleton University, with a cross-appointment to the School of Public Policy and Administration.  Frances received her BA from Simon Fraser University, an MA from Queen's and her PhD from the London School of Economics. Her research on economics of the family and tax policy towards families has been published in the Economic Journal, Canadian Public Policy, Canadian Journal of Economics and other journals, and was recognized with the $10,000 Purvis Award for the best contribution to Canadian economic policy in 2000. More recently Frances has been researching the evolution of academic salaries in Canada and working on a SSHRC-funded study of interdisciplinarity, among other projects.

Frances sits on the editorial boards of  the Review of Economics of the Household, Feminist Economics,  and the Journal of Socio-Economics. From 2003-2007 she was Secretary-Treasurer of the Canadian Economics Association/Association canadienne d'economique

A light lunch will be provided.

For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.