Tax burdens faced by Canadians was recently looked at by the Conference Board of Canada and Alberta fared pretty well.

According to the report, Benchmarking Provincial Tax Burdens, Alberta businesses are better off than all other provinces except two, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick.

A senior economist with the board, Julie Adès, says property taxes are responsible for the tax burden here.

"Since Alberta does not have payroll taxes, it doesn't have a sales tax and social security contributions are quite modest compared to other provinces, the property tax component is one of the large contributors to the tax burden for businesses in Alberta," Adès says.

She says personal tax rates are concentrated among higher earners and along with no provincial sales tax Alberta can expect to continue to have one of the more competitive person tax burdens in Canada.

 "Alberta's tax system has long stood out in Canada—due to the absence of a provincial sales tax and, until recently, by having a single personal income tax rate for all income levels," said Julie Adès, Senior Economist. "We are not yet able to assess the impact of the recent changes in personal taxation. However, since increased personal tax rates are concentrated among the highest income earners—and combined with the absence of a sales tax—Alberta can expect to have one of the more competitive personal tax burdens in the country."

Alberta's provincial corporate income tax burden as a share of gross output in the business sector was the fifth-lowest among the provinces in this analysis, which pre-dates the increase in the corporate tax rate from 10 per cent to 12 per cent in 2015.