Federal Structure of the Canadian Tax System
To understand the structure of the Canadian tax system, it is also important to understand the role of the federal, provincial, territorial, and local (municipal) governments in Canada. Under Canada’s Constitution Act, 1867 (formerly the British North America Act, 1867),5 the federal government has wide taxing powers with few limitations. The provinces are limited to imposing “direct taxation” within the province. With direct taxation, taxes are imposed on taxpayers that will not directly pass the tax on to others. (This limitation exists to prevent the provinces from enacting taxes that are designed to fall on persons that reside outside the province.) Despite these limitations, the provinces are able to levy the most important taxes, such as income and sales taxes, but they are not able to impose tariffs, export taxes, withholding taxes on payments to non-residents, and sales or excise taxes on intermediate goods and services intended to be passed on to other taxpayers.6 Municipalities, which are not sovereign governments under Canada’s constitution, are limited to levying only those taxes that the province authorizes them to collect

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