Mexico and Canada Offer Lowest Business Taxes in the World

The Competitive Alternatives 2010 survey from KPMG found that Mexico and Canada are the top two countries in the world when it comes to taxes and business, and major cities in Canada, like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver helped land them in that second-place position.

In a press release, KPMG's Greg Wiebe said this about Canada's second place position: "Canada has done well in reducing both its federal and provincial corporate tax rates. These changes plus the upcoming Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) in Ontario and B.C. contributed to Canada's improved ranking in this year's report."

As far as cities go, Vancouver led all cities surveyed, with other Canadian cities Montreal coming in at No. 4, and Toronto at No. 5.

KPMG said the metrics used to make the determination included capital tax, income tax, sales tax, property tax, miscellaneous local business taxes, and statutory labor costs.

Competing against their southern neighbors on each coast, Canadian cities were far ahead of their counterparts, such as Vancouver was almost have of its rival city Seattle, scoring 50.5 points to 92.1 for Seattle. The lower the number the better a city was doing.

The same went for Toronto and Montreal when competing with eastern U.S. cities like Boston, Philadelphia and New York.

Add to this the growing confidence in the Canadian dollar, which is performing close to parity with the U.S., and is expected to remain strong for years, and Canada, with its natural resources and now low taxes, is poised and prepared to build their economy even stronger as raw materials remain in demand for a long time.

Their major challenge will be to deal with the strength of the Canadian dollar as it relates to tourism and exports.

The third place country for business taxes in the world was the Netherlands.