Taxes don't stay where you put them

What a shock: A tax on producers gets shifted to consumers. The Gazette (via The Misfit) reports

Quebec energy consumers - not just energy producers - are the ones who will end up paying for the province's new green fund. The bills are in the mail.

It wasn't supposed to be this way: When the provincial government imposed the country's first carbon tax last fall, it wanted producers to pay.

But just as oil refiners have already done, Gaz Métro started passing on the cost of the carbon tax this month.

Even the basic lessons of tax incidence, taught in the first few weeks of ec 10, come as a surprise to some people.