Claiming postsecondary education tax credits: Differences by level of parental income and implications for trends in enrolment rates

Postsecondary students can claim postsecondary education credits to lower their tax obligations (or that of a parent, grandparent, spouse or common-law partner, or their parent or grandparent). Claiming the credits is costless, but it does require knowledge of how the credits work to reduce taxes. As a result, claim rates may be unequal across socio-economic backgrounds, including the level of parental income (a key policy lever for needs-based student financial aid). The purpose of this article is to document claim rates among postsecondary students by level of parental income, as well as to re-assess trends in postsecondary enrolment rates by level of parental income in light of unequal claim rates. These trends were previously established with information on the tax credits in tax data. This study uses data from the T1 Family File (T1FF) and the Postsecondary Student Information System (PSIS), which have been recently linked for all ten provinces from 2009 onwards.