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![]() | Text and/or other creative content from Equalization payments was copied or moved into Equalization payments in Canada with this edit. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. |
The History section (with the exception of the last paragraph) appears to match word for word a CBC News In Depth article. No source is cited. However, it appears that this data was contributed before the articles publishing date.
Fhenning 04:37, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
this article is almost disgusting in that it's very very biased in favour of equalisation payments. I suggest someone redoes it. --Rishiboy 05:56, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
How is it biased? Greyfedora 19:19, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I think the sentence, "The payments have the added benefit of promoting national unity," adds bias. The program also harms Canadian unity in have provinces, because the taxpayers there see their federal tax dollars being spent disproportionately in other provinces. --Llewdor 23:04, 22 March 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps changing the sentence to read "The payments are often seen to have the added benefit of promoting national unity," would eliminate concerns about bias? This can be backed up from any number of sources - David Perry's Candian Tax Foundation paper (#106) entitled "Financing the Canadian Federation, 1867-1995", for example. Kvasir42 23:33, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
I removed this misleading sentence: "Contrary to popular belief, it does not redistribute wealth from richer provinces to poorer ones, since money for equalization payments comes from general federal government funds."
Even if the money don't come from the treasory of those richer provinces, at least, it come from larger proportion of its wealty citizen. Anyway, it was in contradiction with "Legislation like the Canada Health Act requires equal levels of care, something the poorer provinces would not be able to provide without aid from the richer provinces.". The sentence "it is paid for most by the individual Canadian taxpayers who pay the most taxes, whatever their province of residence" explain well enough where the money come from.
I just read this sentence : "However, if a province loses a dollar for every dollar it makes from the sale of its energy resources, there is less incentive to develop those reserves." Why does it only apply to energy resources? --zorxd 22:39, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Related to the above discussion, it is not fully clear to me what the flow of money is. E.g. take this sentence:
So who pays what and who gets what? More detail or clarity needed. Ben Finn 10:27, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I also found that sentence confusing. Maybe it should be changed to something like,
User:carmanahtree 8:27, 15 February 2007
someone ban these people.--Eloc Jcg 17:26, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Most of the article is about just one country. This really should be in an article of its own. Tyronen (talk) 22:35, 30 December 2008 (UTC)
I also agree, then the idiosyncrasies of the Canadian system (and other countries) can be added, such as subsidizing items or hiding income through Crown corporations to increase the amount of equalization. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.165.189.54 (talk) 21:48, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
Add reference to Wiki Canadian GDP page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_provinces_and_territories_by_gross_domestic_product —Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.165.189.54 (talk) 21:57, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
I agree about having a separate Canada articleFwoolley (talk) 21:21, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
I would like to suggest a Simple English language page for Equalization Payments; it's hard enough to understand already. Pheonex (talk) 17:38, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
The Barnett formula isn't really a Equalization formula, it is not based on fiscal need (factors such as sparsity of population, cost of travel, unemployment rates, and health). The UK Government's official measures of fiscal need has clearly show that the per capita need in Wales far higher than that of Scotland, yet the Barnett formula allocates the higher amount to Scotland.
The only reson it's still in use is becouse no one has been able to come up with anying less controversial.--Lord Don-Jam (talk) 09:55, 29 May 2012 (UTC)
Dr. Buttner has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:
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Equalization payments are cash payments made in some federal systems of government from the federal government to subnational governments with the objective of offsetting differences in available revenue or in the cost of providing services. They are generally calculated based on the magnitude of the subnational "fiscal gap": essentially the difference between fiscal need and fiscal capacity. Fiscal capacity and fiscal need are not equivalent to measures of fiscal revenue and expenditure, as making them so would induce perverse incentives to subnational governments to reduce fiscal effort.
Not correct and misleading: not only federations do this, federal government may not be involved, purposes are not well described, "fiscal gap" is something else, and incentives may also affect expenditures. Here is an improved characterization.
Equalization payments are redistributive transfers between subnational jurisdictions or from the national/federal government to subnational jurisdictions. They are generally calculated based on the difference between indicators of what is considered as "fiscal need" and "fiscal capacity." Fiscal need is determined by indicators of how much funds are required to provide a standard or average level of public services. Fiscal capacity is usually defined as fiscal revenue at standardized levels of tax effort. In effect, jurisdictions with relatively high fiscal need receive more transfers while jurisdictions with relatively high fiscal capacity receive less transfers or even have to pay net contributions.
"Germany The German system of equalisation consists of three parts: (i) revenue-sharing of the Value Added Tax (VAT); (ii) Länderfinanzausgleich (LFA) or horizontal fiscal equalisation; and (iii) Bundesergänzungszuweisungen (BEZ)."
Not correct.
Here is a suggestion:
"Germany runs extensive systems of fiscal equalization at the level of states involving vertical and horizontal transfers between states and the federal government as well as at the level of municipalities and counties in all states - except for the three city states. At state level equalization involves four parts: (i) assignment of tax revenues (ii) revenue-sharing of the Value Added Tax (VAT); (ii) Länderfinanzausgleich (LFA) or horizontal fiscal equalisation; and (iii) Bundesergänzungszuweisungen (BEZ)." At municipal level rules vary by state.
We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.
Dr. Buttner has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:
ExpertIdeas (talk) 20:43, 26 August 2015 (UTC)