Largest tax cuts ever delivered in Manitoba

The NDP has delivered the largest tax cuts in our province’s history to Manitoba families and businesses, meeting and exceeding every promise we have made to reduce taxes.

We’ve done this even while balancing every budget, strengthening key services such as health, education and justice, paying down the debt, and earning six credit rating upgrades.

Fairer income taxes

Income and property tax measures save Manitoba families $726 million annually. Income taxes have been brought down through a number of measures, including tax rate and bracket changes, new and heftier tax credits, and allowing pensioners to split eligible pension income for provincial tax purposes.

Lower education property taxes

• Manitoba is the only province to have reduced education property taxes between 2000 and 2008.


• In fact, the NDP has completely eliminated one property tax, the Residential Education Support Levy, saving homeowners $100 million a year.


• We’ve provided renters and homeowners with additional benefits of $117 million annually by increasing the minimum Education Property Tax Credit from $250 in 1999 to $650 in 2009.


• Since 1999 the education taxes on a home assessed at $125,000 have been reduced by an average of 22%, compared to an average increase of 60% over the 1990s.


• Our goal is to ease the burden on property tax payers by increasing the proportion of total public school expenditures paid by the provincial government from 70% to 80% of the total at the end of 2012.

Lower business taxes

• Manitoba will become the first small business tax-free zone in Canada as of December 2010. Thanks to the NDP Manitoba now boasts the lowest small business tax rate in the country - 1%. When we came to power in 1999 it was 8%, the second highest in the country.


• The NDP is also phasing out the general Corporation Capital Tax completely by the end of 2010. The tax has already been eliminated entirely for manufacturing and processing corporations as of July this year to help them adjust to the challenges posed by the strong Canadian dollar.


• Our government has taken the general Corporation Income Tax rate down from 17% in 1999 to the current 12%.


• We’ve increased the payroll tax threshold by one quarter. Fewer than 5% of employers currently pay this tax. One-third of these benefit from the higher threshold.


• A recent KPMG study notes that Winnipeg has the third-lowest effective corporate income tax rate out of 81 cities across North America.


• We’ve introduced a number of tax credits to encourage co-op education, apprenticeship training, the manufacture and use of green-energy equipment, film and video production, and community-based enterprises.

More information on our government’s tax reductions can be found in the 2009 budget at http://www.gov.mb.ca/finance/budget09/index.html.

Figures current as of November, 2009

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