On March 19, 2019, the Honourable Ernie Steeves, Minister of Finance, presented the 2019 New Brunswick budget. This budget predicts that the province’s revenues will grow by 1.5%, while spending will be limited to expand by no more than 1.3%. Based on these revenue projections and spending limits, this year’s budget estimates a surplus of $23 million and total spending approaching $10 billion for 2019-20.
No new taxes or tax increases have been introduced in this year’s budget, but one announcement will be of interest to small businesses, as noted below.
Small Business Income Tax
To show small businesses that it is committed to helping them by cutting taxes, the province announced that the Small Business Income Tax rate will remain at 2.5%. While the federal government introduced a measure, effective January 1, 2019, to phase out access to the federal small business corporate income tax rate based on the amount of passive investment income earned by a corporation, the New Brunswick government did not introduce any measures to align with the federal rules. As a result, small businesses impacted by the federal changes will not face a corporate income tax rate increase from 2.5% to 14%, since New Brunswick will preserve its current rules.
More Information
Further information on New Brunswick’s 2019 budget may be found on the province's web site at: New Brunswick Budget 2019-2020
If you have any questions about how changes proposed in the budget might impact your organization, please do not hesitate to call the Ryan TaxDirect® line at 1.800.667.1600.
- Topics
- Income Tax
- New Brunswick