Alberta's ‘One Percenters’ top list of the richest in Canada

The top one per cent of income earners in Alberta were richer than their wealthy peers in all other provinces in 2012, and the cream of Calgary’s income-earning crop topped the nation, while Edmonton’s upper crust ranked a rather distant second.

That’s according to the most recent compilation of figures by Statistics Canada, derived from 26.3 million personal tax filings.

To be considered among the top one per cent of earners in Edmonton in 2012, a filer needed to report after-tax income of $189,700 in current dollars. In Calgary, the threshold value was a mind-blow- ing, country-leading $278,000. Entry into Toronto’s high-rollers club started at $189,500, in Ottawa-Gatineau it was $168,400, in Vancouver it was $165,200 and in Montreal $145,100.

There were 905,910 personal tax filers in Edmonton in 2012, but the top one per cent, or 9,060 filers, accounted for 8.3 per cent of the total after-tax income reported. In Calgary, these One Percenters accounted for 13.3 per cent of reported after-tax income.

The median age of the One Percenters in Edmonton was 53, and the gender split was 83 per cent male, 17 per cent female. The average pre-tax income of the top echelon in the city was $259,600.

Though Alberta’s elite topped the ranks of the rich in Canada, there could be change afoot, as the average after-tax income for One Percenters in Calgary and Edmonton has been trending drastically downward since hitting a peak in the late 2000s. Expressed in current dollars, in Calgary that average has fallen from $861,000 in 2007 to $666,900 in 2012, a drop of 22.5 per cent. In Edmonton, it was $467,700 in 2008 and just $370,700 in 2012, reflecting a 20.7 per cent free fall.

The slumping price of oil has certainly hurt the bottom line for Alberta corporations and employees in the past year, but it seems those at the very top of the financial food chain in the province failed to recoup major losses sustained during the world economic crisis of 2008 and 2009.

Conversely, the richest of the rich were holding onto more of their personal wealth in other major cities across the nation. In Vancouver, average after-tax incomes of the top one per cent have fallen from $382,700 in 2007 to $342,000 in 2012, o 10.6 per cent. In Toronto the drop was just 7.7 per cent, from $459,500 in 2007 to $424,300 in 2012.

And in Montreal, the average income of the One Percenters actually peaked in 2012 at $282,400, up 13.2 per cent from the 2009 level of $249,500.

As the rich get incrementally less wealthy in Edmonton and Calgary, other tax filers in Alberta’s major centres are keeping more money in their bank accounts. The bottom 50 per cent of earners in Edmonton averaged $17,600 in after-tax income in 2012, a record high for that cohort. The top 50 per cent managed the same feat, averaging $71,700. In Calgary, the bottom 50 per cent peaked in 2012 at $16,600 while the top 50 per cent hit its zenith at $83,900.

The gap between the richest one per cent and the poorest 50 per cent in Edmonton and Alberta has closed, but only marginally, in the past couple of years. In 2012, the bottom 50 per cent of filers earned 4.7 per cent of the total earned by the top one per cent. In 2007, that number was just 3.4 per cent.