5 Conclusion and future work

View the most recent version.

This study has presented updated estimates of government revenue attributable to tourism as well as new estimates of the portions due to domestic tourism and tourism exports covering the years 2000 to 2007. These new estimates show the importance of tourism exports (as well as domestic tourism) in terms of their contribution to government revenue. Not surprisingly, given the decline in tourism exports over the last few years, the export contribution to government revenue has also declined. The study finds that international visitors contribute more (on a per dollar of spending basis) than residents. This stems from the input tax credit available to Canadian businesses for GST and in some instances PST on their business travel expenses, which lowers the effective tax paid by resident visitors, as well as different spending patterns of resident and non-resident visitors.

Several issues remain for future studies of government revenues attributable to tourism. In particular, the coverage could be expanded to give a more complete picture of government revenue. Estimates for the industry distribution of corporate income tax and taxes on unincorporated business income and of social insurance contributions by the self-employed could be improved. It may also be worthwhile to investigate the potential for estimating government revenue attributable to tourism on a quarterly basis.

Last, the study and this report have focussed on the importance of tourism on the revenue side of the government income and outlay accounts, but governments incur expenditures directly related to tourism as well. These expenditures cover items like subsidies to bus transportation, payments of employment insurance to persons with seasonal jobs in tourism industries, marketing efforts to promote tourism in Canada and abroad, management and maintenance of parks, historic sites, and museums, and so on. This would also be a worthwhile avenue to explore in future work.