Cooler inflation in 2023 is affecting how much Canadians will pay in income tax this year.
“Since inflation has cooled in 2023, the increase to the 2024 tax brackets is relatively modest compared to the increase we saw last year,” said Ameer Abdulla, a partner at tax consulting firm EY Canada in Waterloo, Ont., in an email to CTVNews.ca.
“Generally, where an individual’s income remains constant but tax brackets increase, an individual can expect to see their income tax liability decrease,” Abdulla added. “Most taxpayers would view this outcome as a ‘good thing.'”
The indexation increase for 2024 is 4.7 per cent, according to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). That’s lower than the 6.3 per cent increase in 2023 – the largest in several years. In 2021, the increase was just one per cent.
While tax rates haven’t changed this year, tax brackets have been adjusted, Abdulla said.
WHAT IS A TAX BRACKET?
A person’s entire income isn’t taxed at a single rate. Instead, it’s split up into brackets, each with its own rate.
Tax brackets are the different tiers of taxable income, which have higher tax rates applied to them as income increases, Tara Benham, national tax leader at Grant Thornton in Duncan, B.C., said in an email to CTVNews.ca.
Tax brackets are indexed and adjusted based on the consumer price index each year, and tax rates are the percentage of their income people pay to regional and federal governments.
Rates are based on taxable incomes, which refer to incomes after deductions, credits and exemptions are applied. In Canada’s marginal tax rate system, the higher the taxable income, the higher the income tax rate.
The federal government determines the federal income tax rates for individuals, but each province and territory decides its own rates, according to the CRA. These provincial and territorial tax rates are charged in addition to the federal amounts.
FEDERAL TAX BRACKETS FOR 2024
For 2023 returns to be filed by April 30 for everyone except self-employed workers, bracket thresholds rose again this year, indexed by inflation.
Sharon Perry, an accounting and tax specialist from Coquitlam, B.C., broke down the difference for CTVNews.ca.
Consider a taxpayer working as an employee at a company who made $60,000 per year in 2023 and expects to make the same amount in 2024.
In 2023, the first $53,359 of the person’s $60,000 income would be taxed at 15 per cent, which amounts to $8,003.85 in tax. The remaining amount would be taxed at 20.5 per cent, which comes out to $1,361.41.
In total, that employee paid $9,365.26 in federal tax.
In 2024, the first $55,867 would be taxed at 15 per cent ($8,380.05) while the remaining portion would be taxed at 20.5 per cent ($847.26).
In total, that adds up to $9,227.31.
“The difference between the two years is essentially such that the taxpayer would pay less tax under the second tax bracket, rate at 20.5 per cent, and more under the first tax bracket rate, at 15 per cent, because more of their income would apply to the first tax bracket than the second tax bracket,” she said.
WHY TAX BRACKETS CHANGE
“Federal tax brackets are indexed to inflation every year,” said Benham.
“As prices increase, the tax brackets also increase to acknowledge changes in the cost of living,” she said. “Each province also has its own set of provincial tax brackets, and most index them for inflation.”
Indexing them typically reduces the amount of taxes people must pay and prevents them from paying a disproportionately high tax rate based on their income.
BASIC PERSONAL AMOUNT FOR 2024
Canadians can take advantage of various tax credits, deductions and benefits to reduce their total taxes.
To decrease their federal income tax burden, Canadians can claim a tax credit called a basic personal amount.
Federal income tax rates only apply after the individual has earned more than the basic personal amount.
The maximum basic personal amount rose to $15,705 in 2024, capped at $14,156 for individuals with net income above $173,205. Last year, it was $15,000, capped at $13,521 for individuals with net income above $165,430.
With files from CTVNews.ca Contributor Christopher Liew
MONCTON, N.B. – New Brunswick RCMP say two youths have been arrested after an emergency alert was issued Monday evening about someone carrying a gun in the province’s southeast.
Caledonia Region Mounties say they were first called out to Main Street in the community of Salisbury around 7 p.m. on reports of a shooting.
A 48-year-old man was found at the scene suffering from gunshot wounds and he was rushed to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
Police say in the interest of public safety, they issued an Alert Ready message at 8:15 p.m. for someone driving a silver Ford F-150 pickup truck and reportedly carrying a firearm with dangerous intent in the Salisbury and Moncton area.
Two youths were arrested without incident later in the evening in Salisbury, and the alert was cancelled just after midnight Tuesday.
Police are still looking for the silver pickup truck, covered in mud, with possible Nova Scotia licence plate HDC 958. They now confirm the truck was stolen from Central Blissville.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
MISSISSAUGA, Ont. – Golf Canada has set an impressive stretch goal of having 30 professional golfers at the highest levels of the sport by 2032.
The World Junior Girls Golf Championship is a huge part of that target.
Credit Valley Golf and Country Club will host the international tournament from Sept. 30 to Oct. 5, with 24 teams representing 23 nations — Canada gets two squads — competing. Lindsay McGrath, a 17-year-old golfer from Oakville, Ont., said she’s excited to be representing Canada and continue to develop her game.
“I’m really grateful to be here,” said McGrath on Monday after a news conference in Credit Valley’s clubhouse in Mississauga, Ont. “It’s just such an awesome feeling being here and representing our country, wearing all the logos and being on Team Canada.
“I’ve always wanted to play in this tournament, so it’s really special to me.”
McGrath will be joined by Nobelle Park of Oakville, Ont., and Eileen Park of Red Deer, Alta., on Team Canada 2. All three earned their places through a qualifying tournament last month.
“I love my teammates so much,” said McGrath. “I know Nobelle and Eileen very well. I’m just so excited to be with them. We have such a great relationship.”
Shauna Liu of Maple, Ont., Calgary’s Aphrodite Deng and Clairey Lin make up Team Canada 2. Liu earned her exemption following her win at the 2024 Canadian Junior Girls Championship while Deng earned her exemption as being the low eligible Canadian on the world amateur golf ranking as of Aug. 7.
Deng was No. 175 at the time, she has since improved to No. 171 and is Canada’s lowest-ranked player.
“I think it’s a really great opportunity,” said Liu. “We don’t really get that many opportunities to play with people from across the world, so it’s really great to meet new people and play with them.
“It’s great to see maybe how they play and take parts from their game that we might also implement our own games.”
Golf Canada founded the World Junior Girls Golf Championship in 2014 to fill a void in women’s international competition and help grow its own homegrown talent. The hosts won for the first time last year when Vancouver’s Anna Huang, Toronto’s Vanessa Borovilos and Vancouver’s Vanessa Zhang won team gold and Huang earned individual silver.
Medallists who have gone on to win on the LPGA Tour include Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls, Ont., who was fourth in the individual competition at the inaugural tournament. She was on Canada’s bronze-medal team in 2014 with Selena Costabile of Thornhill, Ont., and Calgary’s Jaclyn Lee.
Other notable competitors who went on to become LPGA Tour winners include Angel Yin and Megan Khang of the United States, as well as Yuka Saso of the Philippines, Sweden’s Linn Grant and Atthaya Thitikul of Thailand.
“It’s not if, it’s when they’re going to be on the LPGA Tour,” said Garrett Ball, Golf Canada’s chief operating officer, of how Canada’s golfers in the World Junior Girls Championship can be part of the organization’s goal to have 30 pros in the LPGA and PGA Tours by 2032.
“Events like this, like the She Plays Golf festival that we launched two years ago, and then the CPKC Women’s Open exemptions that we utilize to bring in our national team athletes and get the experience has been important in that pathway.”
The individual winner of the World Junior Girls Golf Championship will earn a berth in next year’s CPKC Women’s Open at nearby Mississaugua Golf and Country Club.
Both clubs, as well as former RBC Canadian Open host site Glen Abbey Golf Club, were devastated by heavy rains through June and July as the Greater Toronto Area had its wettest summer in recorded history.
Jason Hanna, the chief operating officer of Credit Valley Golf and Country Club, said that he has seen the Credit River flood so badly that it affected the course’s playability a handful of times over his nearly two decades with the club.
Staff and members alike came together to clean up the course after the flooding was over, with hundreds of people coming together to make the club playable again.
“You had to show up, bring your own rake, bring your own shovel, bring your own gloves, and then we’d take them down to the golf course, assign them to areas where they would work, and then we would do a big barbecue down at the halfway house,” said Hanna. “We got guys, like, 80 years old, putting in eight-hour days down there, working away.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
NEW YORK (AP) — Fenway Park has the Ted Williams seat. And now Citi Field has the Grimace seat.
The kid-friendly McDonald’s character made another appearance at the ballpark Monday, when the New York Mets unveiled a commemorative purple seat in section 302 to honor “his special connection to Mets fans.”
Wearing his pear-shaped purple costume and a baseball glove on backwards, Grimace threw out a funny-looking first pitch — as best he could with those furry fingers and short arms — before New York beat the Miami Marlins at Citi Field on June 12.
That victory began a seven-game winning streak, and Grimace the Mets’ good-luck charm soon went viral, taking on a life of its own online.
New York is 53-31 since June 12, the best record in the majors during that span. The Mets were tied with rival Atlanta for the last National League playoff spot as they opened their final homestand of the season Monday night against Washington.
The new Grimace seat in the second deck in right field — located in row 6, seat 12 to signify 6/12 on the calendar — was brought into the Shannon Forde press conference room Monday afternoon. The character posed next to the chair and with fans who strolled into the room.
The seat is available for purchase for each of the Mets’ remaining home games.
“It’s been great to see how our fanbase created the Grimace phenomenon following his first pitch in June and in the months since,” Mets senior vice president of partnerships Brenden Mallette said in a news release. “As we explored how to further capture the magic of this moment and celebrate our new celebrity fan, installing a commemorative seat ahead of fan appreciation weekend felt like the perfect way to give something back to the fans in a fun and unique way.”
Up in Boston, the famous Ted Williams seat is painted bright red among rows of green chairs deep in the right-field stands at Fenway Park to mark where a reported 502-foot homer hit by the Hall of Fame slugger landed in June 1946.
So, does this catapult Grimace into Splendid Splinter territory?
“I don’t know if we put him on the same level,” Mets executive vice president and chief marketing officer Andy Goldberg said with a grin.
“It’s just been a fun year, and at the same time, we’ve been playing great ball. Ever since the end of May, we have been crushing it,” he explained. “So I think that added to the mystique.”
