Canadian Issues DAVID DESCÔTEAUX


Should We Tax the Robots?


household help. Also, in Singapore and elsewhere driver- less taxis are replacing human drivers, and restaurants are using self-driving vehicles instead of delivery people. In the US, there is increasing talk about driverless trucks that may soon steal jobs from millions of Americans. Here in Canada, a 2016 Brookfield Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship report predicted that 42% of jobs are at risk of being affected by automation in the next two decades.


More than meets the eye But is taxing robots desirable or even practicable? Sure, once robots have two hands and two legs, it’ll be easier to define them. But what about a robotic arm on an assem- bly line? An automated supermarket checkout? A web application? Should we tax Microsoft’s Office suite because it has replaced clerks and secretaries? Where do we draw the line between an innovation that replaces a worker and one that boosts that worker’s productivity and wages? And couldn’t this result in double taxation for busi-


nesses, including many SMEs? Today, a company that uses technology to increase productivity pays taxes on its


I


N 2017, as thousands of US retail workers lost their jobs, Amazon acquired 75,000 robots. According to news outlet Quartz, the company is investing so heavily in robotics that


machines may account for 20% of its workforce this year. News of this kind is prompting a growing number of politi-


cians, businesspeople and critics to call for something that was the stuff of science fiction a short time ago: a tax on robots. Proposed by European politician Mady Delvaux, the idea of a robot tax is twofold. First, if robots will replace more and more workers in the future, then their work should be subject to taxes just like an employee’s (yes, your income tax). This would ensure governments don’t lose revenue. Secondly, taxing robots and making it more expensive to “hire” them than people would prevent humans from becoming obsolete. The tax revenue generated could also be used to compensate workers and help them re-enter the workforce. Even Microsoſt founder Bill Gates supports the idea, and


prominent economists, including Yale University’s Robert Shiller, think it’s an option worth exploring. Shiller recently wrote that devices, such as Google Home or Amazon’s Echo Dot (Alexa), are beginning to perform tasks once done by


22 | CPA MAGAZINE | FEBRUARY/MARCH 2018


profits. However, if using a robot helps a company generate more profit, it will then have to pay more income tax plus a tax for having used a robot to increase its profitability. Clearly, the notion of taxing robots conjures up the fear that


machines are replacing people and sentencing them to life- long unemployment. But history has shown that this fear is unfounded: technological progress does not impoverish humans, but rather it enriches them, creating opportunities and jobs year aſter year. While some jobs disappear, others are created. According to the latest news, unemployment is at an all-time low. As for the poor government coffers being deprived of


workers’ payroll taxes, I wouldn’t bet on it. Over the past 40 years, countless jobs have been lost to technology and robot- ics. Have governments suffered? Have they shrunk in size? On the contrary, governments have never dug as deep into our pockets as they do today.


DAVID DESCÔTEAUX is a Montreal-based business columnist. He recently published a collection of his columns entitled “L’Argent des autres”


Geneviève Côté


Photo: Yanick Dery


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64