Half-year fiscal report card for Canada

The September update of the Fiscal Monitor is out. This is the half-year mark for fiscal reporting in Canada. We have as follows, for the first half-year comparing 2008-2009 vs. 2009-2010:

1. Personal income tax collection down 7.5%. This is slightly offset by income tax reductions (by virtue of raising the thresholds for the lower two tax brackets).

2. Corporate income tax collection down 39.5%. This is slightly offset by corporate tax reductions, but this shows that corporate profitability has fallen off a cliff between years.

3. GST collection down 17.9%. This is a good indicator of consumer spending.

4. EI Benefits paid up 50.1%. Probably the best proxy measure for unemployment – these people in the future, assuming they do not get jobs, will be paying less in personal income taxes as well.

5. Budgetary balance of a $28.6 billion deficit for the half-year. Extrapolating this out for a full year will result in a $57 billion dollar deficit for the year, slightly higher than the government’s projection of $55 billion.

Oddly enough, public debt charges (i.e. interest on debt) is down from $16.5 billion to $15.1 billion which is because of the very low interest rates offered by the Bank of Canada on public debt. As the term structure of interest rates is severely low at this point in time, it makes one wonder what will occur if or when interest rates start to rise again. Right now the Bank of Canada will happily take your money at 1.12% for 2 years. It will also take your money for 3.22% for 10 years. At this moment, the Bank of Canada should be trying to sell as much long-dated debt as they can, as they are receiving exceptionally low rates.

John Jansen a true financial journalist

Across the Curve was written by John Jansen, and it was something that I thoroughly enjoyed reading. He was quantitative, and factual and to the point. It was very good writing.

Probably a recent highlight for the author was when he got invited to a meeting with a few other bloggers to a meeting with some senior US Treasury officials, and ended up on television for an interview shortly after on Canadian business television.

Anyhow, he got a job with TD Securities and will presumably not be allowed to write about his views on the market, which is tragic, but I wish him the best of luck in his job.

US-Canadian Dollar Pair

This might not be the smartest move, but I have bought a chunk of US dollars for Canadian dollars at 1.0525 (0.9501 is the reciprocal). It has increased my US currency exposure from 25% to 28%. While this is not a huge shift, I am getting somewhat concerned that the carry trade (i.e. investors selling T-bills, selling the US currency for other currency and then basically getting an interest-free loan) is so baked into the current market price that any perturbation that will emerge in the market will cause a huge cover. One perturbation that we saw was back in the July 2008 to March 2009 financial crisis where investors wanted the safety and security of cold, hard US cash.

While I do not think such an outcome is likely, I do think that the current perception that US money is toilet paper is not quite warranted – to reinforce this idea, go to a Walmart Supercenter and see how far your money goes.

Income Trust Taxation in 2011

In Canada, income trust distributions will be taxable to the level where the trust would be roughly equivalent for them to convert into a corporation and distribute dividends from after-tax income. Because a simple corporate structure is easier to understand for most investors, in addition to being cheaper to maintain, it is likely that most conventional income trusts (except for the REITs, which will still have the same tax-free exemptions as existing trusts do) will convert into corporations before the conversion deadline.

There are a whole litany of tax issues involved with conversion (which can be read in the explanatory notes in the July 2008 legislative proposal), but the salient detail is that income trusts by the end of December 2012 will have to convert to corporations in order to prevent a deemed disposition (i.e. tax consequences for unitholders).

In the meantime, trusts will have a distribution tax, both a federal and provincial component. The Federal component will be based on the large corporation tax rate (16.5% in 2011; 15% in 2012 and beyond), while the provincial component will be based on a weighted average where the trust earns its distributable income and the respective province’s large corporate tax rate. In BC, this will be 10%. So in 2011, a trust that operates in BC will have a 26.5% distribution tax put on its distributions; the way to calculate “equivalent distributable income” is by dividing the pre-2011 distribution by one plus the distribution tax.

So for example, if an income trust distributed 100 cents a year of income in 2010, the equivalent will be $1.00*(1/(1+0.265)) or $0.7905/share in 2011; in 2012 this would be $1.00*(1/(1+0.25)) or $0.80/share.

It should be noted that the income coming from trusts will be considered eligible dividends in 2011 and beyond; as a result, the tax treatment to Canadians will more than offset the loss in trust income. At the low tax bracket, the marginal rate for a BC resident for trust income will be 20.06%, while eligible dividend income will be -9.42%. So a $100 trust distribution will end up as $79.94 after taxes for a low income earner, while a $79.05 eligible distribution will yield $89.50 after taxes. At the top tax bracket, $100 of income will end up as $56.30 after taxes, while a $79.05 eligible distribution will end up as $60.15 after taxes.

The take-home message is that once 2011 rolls around, there is going to be no excuse whatsoever to keep income trusts inside the RRSP; they should be immediately removed and placed into a regular taxable account. Alternatively they can be placed inside the TFSA, but one would surrender the tax benefit of the dividend tax credit.

Why analyst calls are useless

Everybody that is seasoned in the market know that analyst research and projections are designed with the purpose of providing institutional business to the underlying investment brokers. As a result, you very rarely hear analysts giving sell recommendations, unless if the firm in question has already burnt its bridges with the company in question.

At best, this research usually reflects the market consensus, plus or minus a few cents on the earnings per share projection. Analyst research is never the basis for making a trade – instead, it is a quasi-benchmark for how you think the company in question will really perform.

When an analyst is brave enough to see a company that is clearly overvalued and makes a sell recommendation, he is usually looking for an exit out of the firm. For example, a brave analyst called Brian Kennedy made a sell call on a company called CardioNet. He was basically forced out of the company, but his negative projections turned out to be correct.

Note if you cut-and-paste the URL into Google, you can view the entire article.

The moral of the story is that analyst research has a function; but the incentives that analysts have serve the investment banking arms of their companies. Anybody doing very sharp research is most likely trading on that information rather than releasing it to the public, as it is far more profitable to trade with superior information than to try to drum up investment banking business.