On Tuesday afternoon, the Minister of Finance, Bill Morneau, tabled his fourth and last budget before the federal election.
Here are the main highlights that apply to businesses.
The SR&ED program provides a refundable tax credit of 35% for eligible small and medium-sized businesses and 15% for all businesses that carry out SR&ED in Canada. Access to the 35% rate is determined by a business’s level of income and capital.
To better support growing innovative businesses as they are scaling up, the government proposes to eliminate the income threshold for accessing the enhanced credit. Consequently, a Canadian-controlled private corporation (CCPC) whose taxable capital does not exceed $10 million will be eligible for unreduced access to the enhanced refundable credit for SR&ED, regardless of its taxable income.
Canadian-Belgian co-productions are now eligible for a 25% refundable credit, under a new memorandum of understanding signed by the two countries.
To follow up on the pilot of the Global Skills Strategy – Global Talent Stream component, the federal government proposes to make it a permanent program. This initiative will give Canadian businesses faster access to top global talent when Canadian workers are unavailable.
This summary presents the major points of the 2019 federal budget that apply to businesses. All the measures presented can be consulted on the Finances Canada website.
Productivité innovation website (in French only)
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