Thanks, Mr. Chair. So, when we forecast the take from personal income tax as well as corporate tax, we work with Finance Canada. I think the Member can appreciate that you do not have the full benefit of all of the tax filing when you are doing those estimates.
In the case of the 2017-2018 revised estimates, where the personal income tax went down quite significantly, the reality is that Finance Canada had overestimated the amount. What they discovered is that there were some, what they described as, “tax behaviours” that they did not account for, that were a result of some of the changes at the federal level in the income tax, and people were taking steps to avoid any increases that may take place.
Most of those impacts are expected to be just a single-year impact, and that is why they forecast for the following year, that we would be back up to $103 million, because of the one-time nature of some of the impacts that they saw.
We work closely with Finance Canada as they get those tax returns in to see if there are any other patterns. You could well imagine with all of the tax filers, sometimes those patterns are hard to discern, but that is the reason why it goes down and then is coming back up. Thanks, Mr. Chair.