The wealthiest Canadians saw their share of total income rise by nearly one per cent between 2014 and 2015, and the number of women among the rich “one percenters” continued to rise, according to Statistics Canada.
The top one per cent of Canadian tax filers held 11.2 per cent of the country’s total income in 2015, up from 10.3 per cent in 2014, StatsCan says.
This was the first increase in the share of total income going to Canada’s one percenters since 2006.
In 2015, the median total income of all income tax filers in Canada was $33,400. To be in the top one per cent, a tax filer must have earned a total annual income of at least $234,700. Just under 270,930 Canadian tax filers reached that level of income in 2015.
Women accounted for a record 23.2 per cent of the wealthiest tax filers in 2015, up from 21.7 per cent in 2014. StatsCan says that was the largest yearly gain for female taxpayers since 1989.
The number of wealthiest tax filers increased in Ontario and British Columbia, and it declined in Alberta in 2015 -- “an indication of the early impact of the downturn in oil prices,” StatsCan says.
Also in the latest StatsCan release:
- The top one per cent of tax filers paid, on average, $183,000 in income taxes to the federal, provincial and territorial governments in 2015.
- Most of the income increases among Canada’s one percenters took place in cities such as Vancouver and Toronto.
- The bottom 50 per cent of tax filers saw a 3.4 per cent increase in average total income.
