Bringing about a higher level of transparency and accountability in provincial and federal governments to help protect taxpayers from abuse
Canada’s 60 biggest corporations have more than 1,000 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, depriving government coffers of up to $15 billion annually, according to a new report being published Wednesday.
The report, titled “Bay Street and Tax Havens: Curbing Corporate Canada’s Addiction” and prepared by the group Canadians for Tax Fairness, shines a light on one of the legal methods used by big corporations to reduce their taxes — tax havens.
Read more at The Toronto Star
As the sun sets over the week-long Paradise Papers media blitz, the sky clouded with 13-million pages of illegally-obtained privacy-breaching documents filled with implied wrongdoing, the world is left with a big question: What the hell was that all about?
Well, for one thing, we learn that it is quite acceptable to breach the privacy of Canadians and citizens of other countries, provided those citizens are rich. Canada‘s Privacy Act is a rigid piece of legislation that attempts to prevent companies, governments and individuals from disclosing private information. When Equifax Canada recently reported a cyberattack that compromised credit card and other information about 100,000 Canadians, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner swung into action: “The investigation is a priority for our office given the sensitivity of the personal information that Equifax holds.”
Read more at Financial Post
In the decade between 2002 and 2012, spending on the criminal justice system increased from approximately $12,200,000,000.00 (i.e., 12.2 billion dollars), to approximately $20,300,000,000.00 (i.e., 20.3 billion dollars). This rise occurred despite the fact that during the same period, incidents of reported crime decreased by approximately 30%.
The rise in spending on the criminal justice, thus represents an increase of approximately 66% (i.e., an average increase of approximately 5.2% per year) at the same time the number of reported incidents of crime were falling at an average rate of approximately 3.5%. Assuming the pattern has held true over the last 5 years, one can now estimate that Canadian taxpayers are currently spending approximately, $28,000,000,000.00 (i.e., 28 billion dollars) per year (i.e., approximately 77 million dollars per day), for a problem that affects, at most, 5% of the population each year (see: crime rate per capita below).
Read more at Criminal Law Reform
OTTAWA — About one-fifth of a group of wealthy Canadians who took part in a federal government survey last year didn’t believe that a proposed advertising campaign about a federal crackdown on tax cheats would do anything to deter people from using overseas tax havens.
There was a similar response from “high net worth” respondents who took part in the survey, conducted last December but released only recently. About one quarter of respondents didn’t believe that the Canada Revenue Agency ads would deter people from taking part in the underground economy.
Read more at CTV News
OTTAWA – The Canada Revenue Agency says it won’t hesitate to investigate new evidence of offshore tax evasion in the wake of a second massive leak of tax haven financial records.
The leak of some 13.4 million records, dubbed the Paradise Papers, lifts another veil on the often murky ways in which the wealthy – including more than 3,000 Canadian individuals and entities – stash their money in offshore accounts to avoid paying taxes.
Read more at Maclean’s Magazine
If I had Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s money, I’d buy a first-class ticket to Paris, then find the nearest Porsche dealership, acquire a loaded Carrera, drive straight to that villa in Provence he owns through a shell company, and send a note back to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Canadian public tendering my resignation and wishing everyone the very best in the years to come. Canadians would never hear from me again.
Read more at CBC News
There have been many column inches dedicated to the current proposals for the federal tax code pertaining to small businesses. The governing Liberals have expended vast political capital in the name of fairness for the “middle class.” Doctors, lawyers, farmers, technology entrepreneurs, chambers of commerce and the opposition Conservatives have pushed back, essentially alleging that the government is engaging in demagoguery.
Read more at CBC News
The accusation opened a new front in the ongoing opposition waged war on government taxation policy, amid the backdrop of the conflict-of-interest controversy dogging Finance Minister Bill Morneau over whether he’s properly distanced himself from millions of dollars of private sector assets.
Diabetes Canada was among the groups that joined Conservative politicians to publicly denounce what they say is a clawback of a long-standing disability tax credit to help them manage a disease that can cost the average sufferer $15,000 annually.
Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre branded it as one more example of an out-of-touch Liberal government that he characterized as unfairly targeting the hardworking middle class people it claims to support.
Read more at CTV News
The OPP wants to make sure you are not one of the thousands of victims of identity fraud expected to lose millions of dollars this year.
Last year, there were 9,481 complaints about it in Canada. Those victims are expected to suffer a combined loss of $12-million.
October is Cyber Security Month, and the OPP believes the more the public knows about identity fraud, the less likely people will be victimized.
Police have released a video in hopes of educating the public.
Read more at Blackburn News
Over the past 75 days, Canada has witnessed something very rare — a spontaneous, grassroots response from small business owners, a group typically way too busy to mount protests and campaigns about government policy.
I have been impressed to see business owners from coast to coast reaching out to their MPs, setting up special websites and packing local meeting halls. The federal government’s proposed tax changes have caused a firestorm of reaction from small business owners, which appears to have genuinely surprised our political leaders.
Read more at Toronto Sun