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The tax cut will amount to an average cut of $330 for individuals and $540 for couples — which is welcome relief. But there must be serious doubts about the affordability of the measure — something the Liberals would have known, even as they sold it as a wash financially.

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The day the proposal was released in early May, the C.D. Howe Institute’s research director, Alexandre Laurin, told me the tax package would never pay for itself. Experience in other jurisdictions such as the U.K. showed that tax receipts fall because people find ways to reduce their taxable income.

He released a paper to that effect last week, suggesting the new income tax rate of 33% would yield less new revenue than the Liberals had suggested.

The government admitted as much Monday, saying the new tax changes would cost a net amount of $1.2 billion a year for the next five years.

Morneau has already given a fiscal update suggesting that slower than expected growth has turned a forecast surplus this fiscal year into a deficit of $3 billion, before any Liberal campaign promises are factored in.

The new government had pledged that it would rack up deficits of $25 billion over three years, before returning to surplus in 2019-20.

This political shape-shifting is already becoming a familiar routine for this government

The finance minister would not comment on whether he thought the deficits would grow bigger than $10 billion a year, beyond saying he remains committed to a return to balance by the end of the Liberal mandate.

The Liberals estimated the net cost of their annual spending promises at around $10 billion but, as we have seen with the cost of bringing in 25,000 Syrian refugees and now the middle-class tax cut, that platform is as reliable a guide to true costs as a contractor’s home improvement estimate.