Looking for a Healthy Tax Break

Looking for a Healthy Tax Break
by author Ian Hanington

Benjamin Franklin famously said, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” A coalition of groups involved in natural health products and services would like to ease the burden of the latter for those who take care to delay the former.

The Canadian Self-Care Tax Reform Coalition is lobbying the federal government to allow income tax deductions for natural health products, such as vitamins and supplements, as medical expenses. Anne Wilkie, the Canadian Health Food Association’s head of regulatory affairs and newly appointed vice president, appeared before the government’s standing committee on finance to ask for changes in the January 2007 budget to allow the deductions.

“It would work in the same way that pharmaceutical products currently are deducted from your income tax,” Wilkie told alive in a phone interview from Toronto. “What we would like to see is that any product meeting the definition of a natural health product would be included in this deduction.”

Defining What’s Deductible

Although Wilkie is optimistic that the government will listen–and indeed, one Conservative MP has introduced a private members’ bill calling for the deductions–the initiative faces numerous challenges. Currently, products that are prescribed as medically necessary are tax deductible, but over-the-counter products are not. (In a few rare cases, deductions have been allowed when a medical professional has prescribed natural health products to someone with severe health problems.) However, some might argue that if vitamins are tax deductible, then foods that contain vitamins or other healthy properties such as antioxidants should also be included.

“Obviously, one of the real difficulties with this issue is that the edges of it are so broad and ill-defined, and to administer a tax system, you have to draw the line somewhere,” said David MacLean, dean of the faculty of health sciences at Simon Fraser University.

It could be difficult to determine what would be eligible for tax deductions. “I think, unfortunately, the needs of bureaucracy and fairness require some process by which fairness can be judged,” MacLean said. “If you get it [vitamin C] from orange juice, should you be allowed to deduct it? I’m sure the makers of orange juice would like you to be able to.”

Wilkie noted recent regulations governing natural health products would make the process easier. “They would have to have a natural health product number on them,” she said. “All the natural health products in Canada are currently going through this regulatory process to apply for product licences. There are about 15,000 they are currently working on, but there are up to about 55,000 that will go through the process before the end of 2009.” (The government plans to have the review completed by 2010.)

As for allowing deductions for other healthy products, Wilkie said, “That might be a claim in the future, but for now we’re looking at natural health products because we know they can reduce health care costs significantly in this country.”

Vote for Vitamins

Joy Smith, Conservative MP for Kildonan-St. Paul, Manitoba, introduced a bill last year that mirrors the coalition’s recommendation, but she doesn’t see all vitamins and supplements becoming tax deductible. “The purpose of this private members’ bill is to acknowledge that vitamins and vitamin supplements are widely used, particularly by seniors, and that under doctors’ recommendation they should be tax deductible,” she explained.

Smith believes the government could get behind the idea. “We’re doing things in a new way because health care is one of the biggest issues in our country, and with an aging demographic, that’s something we really have to look at,” she said.

One MP who has been introducing a private members’ bill regarding natural health products every year since 1998 isn’t as hopeful. Peter Stoffer, NDP member for Sackville-Eastern Shore, Nova Scotia, has been promoting a bill that would allow deductions for herbal or natural alternatives that are prescribed by a health professional.

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Vancouver writer and editor Ian Hanington hopes that his green tea and red wine will one day be tax deductible.

Source: alive #294, April 2007

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