IESET.
Policies·ca_corporate_tax_cut_22_to_15_2007_2012

Canada — Federal general corporate income tax reduction (2007-2012)

CAN·2007 2012·enacted 2007-10-30·Conservative Party minority then majority (2011-15)candidate
movestax corporatespending level

What the policy did

Through the 2007 Economic Statement and Budget 2008, the Harper government legislated a pre-scheduled reduction in the federal general corporate income tax rate from 22.12% (including the 1.12% corporate surtax eliminated in 2008) down a fixed annual path to 15% effective 1 January 2012: 19.5% in 2008, 19% in 2009, 18% in 2010, 16.5% in 2011, 15% in 2012. Provincial combined rates put the typical all-in Canadian corporate rate in the low-to-mid twenties — among the lower rates in the G7 and below the US federal rate at the time (35% until TCJA 2017). Stated rationale was competitiveness and investment incentive. Revenue cost estimated by Finance Canada in the range of C$6-7B/year at full phase-in relative to the 2006 baseline.

Policy-content fingerprint — what this policy moved, on which axes

Per invariant 3, reforms are scored by what they did on each channel-separated axis, not by the party that enacted them. This fingerprint is how the policy-match engine finds historical analogues.

intended
tax corporate
fiscal.tax_corporate
Statutory and effective corporate tax rates, treatment of depreciation, and international competitiveness.
decreased · strong
lower corporate tax burden
Pre-legislated reduction in the general federal corporate rate from 22.12% to 15% over five years.
spending level
fiscal.spending_level
General government spending as share of GDP, excluding transfers already captured under fiscal.transfer_expansion to avoid double-counting.
decreased · moderate
lower spending share
Revenue loss roughly C$6-7B/year at full phase-in; part of the deficit-widening that the post-2010 consolidation addressed.

Enacted by

Empirical evidence — linked hypotheses

Explicit links are curated by the author. Inferred links are hypotheses in the library that test the same axes this policy moved — the framework's answer to "what does the data say about a policy like this?".

Large welfare states sustain long-run real GDP per capita growth when paired with market flexibility (low product- and labour-market barriers), trade openness, and fiscal discipline (debt-to-GDP below 90%), but not when paired with rigid product and labour markets, in an OECD and rich- country panel 1980-2020.
welfare_state_market_flexibility_complementinferred
viafiscal.spending_level
PARTIAL — coef=+3.308e-18, p=0.653; effect magnitude effectively zero
partial
Truss 2022 mini-budget shows that unfunded fiscal expansion above the ZLB triggers sharp bond-market and currency responses through expected-inflation and risk-premium channels.
unfunded_fiscal_expansion_above_zlb_bond_market_responseinferred
viafiscal.spending_level
SUPPORTED — GBP/USD trough on 2022-09-26 (1.0703) was 5.02% below the 2022-09-22 pre-announcement close (1.1269); log-decline +0.0515 clears the 3.0% threshold …
supported
Fiscal multipliers are state-dependent: large at ZLB, small near full employment; no single-number answer is policy-relevant.
fiscal_multipliers_state_dependentinferred
viafiscal.spending_level
REFUTED — sign - OPPOSITE claim +, cumulative_effect=-1.569, h=5, p_h=0.0155
refuted
The Soviet central-planning system, having already exhibited TFP stagnation 1970-1989, underwent a canonical institutional and economic collapse 1989-1998 as plan-enforcement was withdrawn without functioning market institutions in place.
soviet_union_central_planning_gdp_collapse_1989_1991inferred
viafiscal.spending_level
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — no outcome variable loaded; missing: ['derived: count of canonical_metrics with threshold met']
run pending
UK Truss mini-budget 2022 gilt crisis reflected market confidence and institutional-framework rupture rather than an MMT-predicted hard fiscal limit, because the BoE restored order by intervening as issuer.
uk_truss_mini_budget_currency_sovereign_mechanisminferred
viafiscal.spending_level
partial — Both mechanism legs are directionally consistent but at least one fails the SUPPORTED threshold: FX leg holds (5.02% trough decline); yield leg partia…
partial
UK GDP per capita (PPP, constant international dollars) diverged negatively from a matched synthetic counterfactual of similar-income anglophone/developed economies (USA, CAN, AUS, NZL, DEU, NLD, CHE) starting around 2008 and widening post-2016 (Brexit referendum).
uk_economic_decline_multi_movementinferred
viafiscal.spending_level
INCONCLUSIVE_DATA_PENDING — treatment 'uk_post_2008' has no within-country variation under country fixed effects
run pending
Across the OECD 38, over 2000-latest, larger general government final consumption as a share of GDP is associated with slower growth in real household disposable income per capita, controlling for demographics, initial-income level, energy-price exposure, and trade openness.
state_size_reduces_household_income_growthinferred
viafiscal.spending_level
PARTIAL — coef=-1.248e-17, p=0.809; effect magnitude effectively zero
partial
Conditional on latest real GDP per capita and broad Heritage region, countries with higher Heritage lower-tax-burden score in 2024 have higher latest-available account ownership.
heritage_tax_burden_account_ownership_income_region_robustnessinferred
viafiscal.spending_levelfiscal.tax_corporate
REFUTED — controlled market-score coefficient has opposite sign and p=0.01161
refuted

Similar historical policies

Ranked by axis-fingerprint overlap with this policy. Direction match bolded — those are the closest historical analogues. Shape of the match is what drives policy-outcome comparison, not the country or party label.

References