This study is the first attempt to give an organized survey of the development of the Canadian tax structure from earliest times. It covers a span of three centuries from the first primitive imposts to the highly complex measures of today. The main emphasis is on the dominant role that taxes, tariffs, and intergovernmental subsidies have played in Canadian life since Confederation.

Taxes, Tariffs, & Subsidies covers taxation at all three levels of government -- federal, political, and municipal. It gives the history of the major -- income taxes, corporation profits taxes, sales taxes, death duties, tariffs, and property taxes. It relates the growth of provincial taxes in the chaotic tax situation of the depression, and tells of municipal experiments with the "single tax," the personal property tax, and the income tax. It describes the financial policies of World War I, of the depression, of World War II, and of the post-war period.

In tracing the development of tariff policy from colonial times, Mr. Perry places special emphasis on those far-reaching and influential measures that have helped to shape the Canadian nation -- Reciprocity, the National policy, the British Preferential Tariff, and the Ottawa Agreements -- and discusses the implications of the latest phase, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.

One of the most pressing problems in Canada is the proper allocation of taxing powers between the federal government and the provinces, and the payment of subsidies by the Dominion to the provinces. This book explains the background of the arrangements made at the time of union and traces the subsequent developments down to the present scheme of tax rental agreements.

Tables, summaries, chronological surveys, and biographical material included in Taxes, Tariffs, & Subsidies give more information on all forms of Canadian taxation than has ever been presented in one book. As a source of data alone it will be of great value to all concerned with taxation.

This book is sponsored by the Canadian Tax Foundation.

In preparing the first edition of Taxation in Canada Mr. Perry drew on his experience of over fifteen years of close association in the federal Department of Finance, Ottawa, with the formulation of Dominion tax policy and the drafting of tax laws. He was also directly involved in the negotiations and execution of the tax rental agreements between the Dominion and provincial governments, which give him an intimate knowledge of the provincial tax structure in Canada as well. Mr. Perry's study of taxation has also benefited from his nine years' association with the Canadian Tax Foundation; he became its Director and Chief Executive Officer in 1954, and the exercise of his duties kept him in close contact with the tax problems of the business community and of governments throughout Canada. Since March 1961 Mr. Perry has been Executive Director of the Canadian Bankers' Association. A number of special assignments have come to Mr. Perry in recent years. In 1953 he was sent by the Colonial Office to Nigeria, in 1958 he visited Ghana on a mission for the United Nations, and in 1959-60 he prepared a survey of the budgeting system of the Province of Newfoundland.

J. Harvey Perry's profile page

"As a source of data alone, this book will prove invaluable; its tables, summaries, chronological surveys and biographical material provide more information on Canadian taxation than has ever been gathered together in one book. Mr. Perry's informed comment, interpretation and evaluation of Canadian taxation past and present are an invaluable aid to intelligent understanding of the issues involved."

TAXES: The Tax Magazine

"Inevitable, any organized survey of the development of the Canadian tax structure involves an economic history of Canada, and that, superbly documented and supplemented with 200 pages of bibliography, statistical tables and chronological charts, J. Harvey Perry has written readably and authoritatively."

The Business Quarterly

"It would be difficult to conceive of a more comprehensive study of the related subjects of taxes, tariffs and subsidies. To round out the two solid volumes of facts, Mr. Perry gives his readers 40 pages of the main events in taxation -- a chronology from 1650 to 1954, also one of the most helpful bibliographies imaginable."

LEX .... The Lawyers' Magazine