The Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses is calling the recent federal budget a disappointment.
Vice President Richard Truscott says the broken promise of a 9% small business tax rate is forefront, it will instead drop just 0.5% to 10.5%.
“That’s something that was expected and hoped for by entrepreneurs across the country. They have clearly backed away from that, that’s going to cost entrepreneurs almost a billion dollars per year as of 2019.”
Another big one is the backtracking on the promised youth employment hiring credit.
“That was very helpful for a lot of employers as they try to hire young people between the ages of 18-24. That’s something that we applauded when the Liberals announced that measure and we are obviously very disappointed that they’ve pulled that off the table.”
But it was the sheer size of the budget that proved to be the most overarching concern.
“The other big red flag in this budget is the massive increase in spending to operating budgets now going up beyond 7 points over the next year. We are going to see 30 billion dollars in deficit for just the coming year and billions beyond that.”
The CFIB is also “alarmed” that the government committed to reaching an agreement to expand the Canada Pension Plan/Quebec Pension Plan before the end of the year, which they say will force employers to cut salaries or reduce hours to pay for any CPP/QPP hike.