Forget the Isle of Man. Ottawa is our latest tax haven.
By Alan Freeman. Published on Jul 21, 2021 4:01pm
'Realizing a disaster in the making, efforts were made to stop the bill and introduce amendments, but it was too late.'
Canada Revenue Agency headquarters in Ottawa (Jolson Lim/iPolitics)
Accounting firms and tax lawyers who spend their days figuring out aggressive ways of reducing taxes for their corporate clients no longer have to conjure up schemes that involve sending assets to the Isle of Man or other tax havens.
Thanks to the Parliament of Canada, they’ve been handed a series of loopholes in the Income Tax Act that could allow a rush of tax-free transfers of shares between business owners and their children. It’s called Bill C-208, and it’s the worst public-policy failure I’ve seen in a long time, demonstrating everything wrong about how MPs, government, and the bureaucracy work — or, more precisely, don’t work — together. The result is a train wreck that could cost the treasury hundreds of millions of dollars.