Bracket creep: A stealthy tax increase

About $2,100. That’s how much Premier Wab Kinew’s bracket creep tax hike could cost your family by 2030, depending on how much you make.

Bracket creep is an income tax hike that happens when the government stops indexing tax brackets to inflation. That means that after getting a cost-of-living raise, taxpayers can be bumped into a new tax bracket and have their tax bill increased even though they can’t afford to buy more.

Think about it this way: A raise that only covers higher grocery prices isn’t a real raise. You’re not richer. Your cart costs the same. But the bigger number on your paycheque bumps you into a higher bracket. That means higher taxes on a paycheque that buys the exact same number of groceries as last year.

That’s why most provincial governments and the federal government adjust income tax brackets with inflation.

They don’t punish their taxpayers for receiving a cost-of-living pay raise. Only Ontario also has some form of bracket creep, but it only applies to high-income earners. British Columbia is imposing bracket creep next year as that province sinks in runaway debt.

But Saskatchewan indexes its brackets. So does Alberta.

Not Manitoba.

The Manitoba government started indexing its tax brackets in 2017. Kinew brought back bracket creep in 2025. If you made $60,000 and only received cost of living raises since then, bracket creep will have cost you $115 by the end of this year.

But that’s only the beginning. Bracket creep doesn’t just take more from taxpayers once, but it increases every year that the government fails to index tax brackets.

And the cost compounds.

That’s because taxpayers aren’t just paying this year’s bracket creep. They’re also paying the cumulative cost from previous years. That’s why bracket creep can cost taxpayers only a few dollars the first year and then hundreds of dollars a couple of years later.

That’s why that same taxpayer, who made $60,000 in 2025, will pay about $1,051 in bracket creep by 2030, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation bracket creep report. Someone making $100,000 will pay about $2,917 and someone earning $30,000 will be on the hook for $684.

That’s a month of groceries. That’s a full set of hockey equipment. And it’s all being stealthily plucked out of Manitoba taxpayers’ pockets.

Bracket creep is a sneaky tax hike. The government doesn’t tell you how much the tax hike costs every year. Politicians don’t even vote to increase the tax. Kinew simply stopped indexing tax brackets and let inflation do the dirty work.

This year’s budget doesn’t contain a single line on how much extra bracket creep is costing taxpayers this year. The CTF had to calculate it.

Instead, Kinew is trying to paper over his bracket creep tax hike with inadequate tax relief.

The government took the seven per cent provincial sales tax off prepared food on July 1. It estimates this will save families $100 per year. A family with both parents working and earning $70,000 will pay $1,700 more in bracket creep than they will get back from the PST cut by 2030.

Cutting the PST was still the right thing to do, but cutting a small tax while continuing to hike a big one is unhelpful at best and deceitful at worst.

Manitobans were struggling with the weight of their annual tax bill before Kinew hiked taxes through bracket creep. A Manitoba family making $75,000 a year pays more in provincial taxes than similar families anywhere else in Western Canada.

Kinew never announced this tax hike. He never campaigned on it. Provincial politicians have never voted on it. Kinew needs to stop profiting off inflation and start indexing tax brackets again. Manitoba taxpayers simply can’t afford it.

Gage Haubrich is the Prairie director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.