Commentary
Alberta boasts many unique advantages—awe-inspiring mountain vistas, bounteous natural resources, and a young and dynamic population among them. But there was only ever one double-uppercase “Alberta Advantage.”
Beginning in the 1990s under Progressive Conservative Premier Ralph Klein, the province marketed itself across Canada and around the world as a low-tax haven based on three key factors. First, Alberta had no provincial sales tax. Second, it maintained the lowest corporate taxes in Canada. Third, instead of a productivity-inhibiting progressive personal income tax, it levied a unique flat tax of 10 percent on all earned income.
This potent fiscal mix made Alberta an outlier among provinces and a preferred destination for investors and job seekers. At the peak of the Alberta Advantage in the early-2000s, the province had the lowest combined provincial/federal corporate and personal tax rates of any jurisdiction in North America. As a result, the economy boomed, the provincial debt disappeared, and Alberta often out-competed low-tax U.S. states such as North Dakota and Texas for workers and investment….