The Senate’s amendments to Invoice C-234 in December may lead to farmers paying $910 million extra in carbon tax, in line with up to date evaluation by the Parliamentary Funds Officer (PBO).

After a number of weeks of contentious debate, a slender majority of Senators voted to restrict the proposed carbon tax exemption for pure gasoline and propane used on farms to grain drying, excluding barn heating and different on-farm functions. The Higher Chamber then handed a second modification to scale back the minimal variety of years the exemption can be in impact from eight to 3.

On Tuesday, the PBO revealed an up to date estimate on the influence the amendments to C-234 would have on federal carbon tax income if the newest model of the invoice passes.

When put next with a situation the place C-234 doesn’t change into regulation, passage of the amended invoice would lead to a $69 million discount in carbon tax proceeds for the federal government, the PBO decided.

The model of the invoice handed by the Home of Commons final 12 months that included the longer eight-year sundown clause and barn heating was projected to scale back federal carbon tax income by $979 million over the following eight years — a $910 million distinction.

If solely the Senate’s first modification — to take away the exemption for the heating and cooling of livestock barns and greenhouses — had handed, the invoice would nonetheless have supplied $251 million in reduction for grain drying. In different phrases, the primary modification eliminated the exemption for an estimated $728 million in carbon taxes to be paid for heating and cooling livestock barns and greenhouses.

The second modification, which shortened the timeline from eight to 3 years, additional decreased the carbon tax reduction from the invoice to a complete of $69 million.

The PBO says it assumes the federal government will “correspondingly scale back gas cost proceeds returned such that there isn’t a budgetary influence,” referring to the Return of Gas Cost Proceeds to Farmers Tax Credit score, which ranges from 0.14% to 0.186% of eligible bills, relying on province.

It’s additionally not clear how the PBO accounted for GST that’s paid on the federal carbon levy.

Conservative MP Ben Lobb launched a movement within the Home of Commons in late January to reject the Senate’s amendments to C-234. The Conservatives are anticipated to convey Lobb’s movement again for debate once more throughout Personal Member’s Enterprise on Feb. 14, however MPs that assist the movement haven’t any method to pressure a vote so long as Liberal members against the movement are keen to face up and converse to it.

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C-234 again within the Home of Commons, as MPs debate movement to reject Senate’s amendments

Invoice C-234 would scale back carbon tax collected from farms by almost a billion {dollars} by 2030: PBO report