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Income splitting makes sense. The bulk of Canadians understand it as a way to share income at tax time, the way they do in practice. The current plan does not go far enough, and we should be discussing ways to improve it, for example, by including single parents. Instead we are trapped in a cycle of re-hashing the talking points of those who prefer high taxes and high levels of redistribution over a strong, stable and fairly independent family.

The latest round happened when the Parliamentary Budget Office released a family taxation report on March 17. In the speedy media cycle, with most Canadians only tuning in with one ear, we learned that family taxation only benefits the rich, that it would pull people out of the workforce and that a mere 15% of families would benefit.

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This isn’t exactly what the report said.

First, according to the report, the risk of pulling people out of the workforce under the current plan is quite small — a decrease of 0.01% of total employment income.