The federal government announced today that they intend to honour their campaign promise of 2015 to lower the small business corporate tax rate to 9% over the next 15 months.

This would bring the combined federal and provincial taxes on the first $500,000 of annual corporate profits down to 12%. This is good news for many of our clients but it does not nearly make up for the proposed changes to dividend “sprinkling” and passive investment taxes that they floated this fall.

We are anticipating further press conferences this week that will hopefully show that the government has reconsidered the damaging effects their closing of “loopholes” would have on small businesses and family farms.

As more information is released, we will keep you updated.