For people in the book biz, the big news out of yesterday’s Ontario budget announcement was that books are exempt from the new harmonized sales tax. There were also, however, a few tweaks worth noting to the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit. As it stands now, publishers are eligible for a 30% refundable tax credit for “expenditures related to publishing and promoting the first three books by a Canadian author in an eligible category of writing.” (Those eligible categories being: adult or children’s fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and biography.)

Under the proposed new budget, however, the credit will be extended to “any number” of books by a Canadian author in an eligible category. Furthermore, it can also be applied to “direct expenses that reasonably relate to publishing an electronic version of an eligible book.” You can see the full details here, about halfway down the page.

These are probably sound adjustments on the whole, but we have to wonder: does extending the credit to books by completely established authors “ by Atwood or Ondaatje or Munro, say “ remove one of the few financial incentives for publishing the untested ones?