For almost 60 years, the Canadian Tax Foundation published an annual monograph, <i>Finances of the Nation</i>, and its predecessor, <i>The National Finances</i>. In a change of format, the 2014 <i>Canadian Tax Journal</i> introduced a new "Finances of the Nation" feature, which presents annual surveys of provincial and territorial budgets and topical articles on taxation and public expenditures in Canada. In this article, the authors recount how Canadian governments have responded to the COVID-19 crisis through the economic measures announced between March 11 and May 15, 2020. Their analysis shows that Canadian governments have acted quite rapidly and that, by expanding emergency measures, they have tried to help just about everyone. The authors set out the estimated costs of the various measures, followed by a brief comparison of Canada's response with the responses of other countries. The underlying data for the <i>Finances of the Nation</i> monographs and for the articles in this journal will be published online in the near future.

After action 5 of the base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) project identified intellectual property (IP) regimes as harmful, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) proceeded to recommend that favourable tax treatment be available only under a nexus approach. More than 25 countries now offer a form of IP regime. The introduction of the global minimum tax may limit the effectiveness of IP regimes. The impact of this tax will vary with the circumstances, however. A comprehensive examination of the optimal alignment of innovation tax incentives for multinational enterprises (MNEs) must be undertaken under the GloBE rules. In this paper, the authors begin by providing an overview of the global context of IP regime adoption, and they summarize some research findings with respect to the effectiveness of this type of preferential tax regime in achieving the objectives set by governments. Next, they present examples to illustrate, in simple terms, some of the interactions that must be considered when these regimes are being designed in a Canadian context. From the MNEs' perspective, the impact of the interaction between the GloBE rules and research and development (R & D) incentives will depend on, among other things, (1) the location of the IP income, tangible assets, and R & D activities; (2) the proportion of IP income; and (3) the possibility of leveraging the corporate structure. From a tax policy perspective, the introduction of the GloBE rules will in some cases not alter the suitability of an IP-preferential regime when the effective tax rate remains above 15 percent. When the GloBE rules apply, however, the characteristics of the tax regime—for example, IP regime tax rates, R & D incentive mechanisms, and (most of all) the additive effect of the measures (federal plus provincial measures, and R & D credits plus IP deductions)—will alter the results. From the perspective of tax competition, the opportunity to adopt an IP regime also depends on the perceived risks of losing or deterring R & D activities now that IP regimes are related to local R & D activities and are widespread. Finally, the federal-provincial context complicates the design and the deployment of a tax policy that is aimed at stimulating innovation and that will require some form of negotiation, if not cooperation, with the implementation of a global minimum tax.