Having friends in high places is certainly something the wealthy must savour as they continue to hide money in offshore tax havens. Yes, the very same havens the Trudeau government promised to crack down on. And the very same tax havens that, as I recently posted, seem to inspire timidity in our Canada Revenue Agency.
A new report by the CBC/Fifth Estate suggests that timidity is deepening:
The Canada Revenue Agency has once again made a secret out-of-court settlement with wealthy KPMG clients caught using what the CRA itself had alleged was a "grossly negligent" offshore "sham" set up to avoid detection by tax authorities, CBC's The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada's Enquête have learned.Apparently, who you are and what you are worth entitles you to special privileges, including a totally sealed record of your settlement with the CRA:
This, despite the Liberal government's vow to crack down on high net-worth taxpayers who used the now-infamous Isle of Man scheme. The scheme orchestrated by accounting giant KPMG enabled clients to dodge tens of millions of dollars in taxes in Canada by making it look as if multimillionaires had given away their fortunes to anonymous overseas shell companies and get their investment income back as tax-free gifts.
... tax court documents obtained by CBC News/Radio-Canada show two members of the Cooper family in Victoria, as well as the estate of the late patriarch Peter Cooper, reached an out-of-court settlement on May 24 over their involvement in the scheme.Quite understandably, many are outraged by this:
Details of the settlement and even minutes of the meetings discussing it are under wraps. A CBC News/Radio-Canada reporter who showed up to one such meeting this spring left after realizing it was closed to the public.
Toby Sanger, executive director of the advocacy group Canadians for Tax Fairness, says the CRA should never have agreed to settle the case.
"I think it's outrageous," he said. "We've had a lot of tough talk and promises from this minister [National Revenue Minister Diane Lebouthillier] about how they will crack down on tax evasion by the wealthy and corporations, but unfortunately we've seen no evidence of this so far."
The Trudeau government's previous tough talk on the so-called KPMG sham had come after a document leaked to The Fifth Estate/Enquête showed the CRA itself had offered a secret "no penalties" amnesty in May 2015 to many of the other KPMG clients involved in the scheme.Apologists for the Trudeau government will insist that the CRA was acting independently of the government, but that clearly flies in the face of reality, given Trudeau's promises in 2017 to do a "better job of getting tax avoiders and tax frauders."
The CRA offered to have them simply pay the back taxes owed — but with the condition they not tell the public about the offer.
Like their attempts to influence the course of justice in the SNC-Lavalin affair, this latest report is yet one more arrow indicating where the sympathies and loyalties of our federal government really lie.
.. the 'downside of up' - that's what I'll describe this phenomena as (after the famous book, The Upside of Down) In reality, the voting population of Canada may not get too excited or steamed regarding this CBC expose. A certain % may read of it. And in fairness. that % is a large number of people ! But can it swing a single vote or a riding during a federal election ? Will it swing your vote or mine ? Are we even really really concerned, knowing that some wealthy people willingly engage in tax fraud. I would say 'YES' but with the proviso that we know we can't really do a damn thing about 'Double Standards'. We certainly know by know through incident after incident, case after case, that the phenomena is rampant. It probably should be among the primary motivations and decisions of voters - that the nudge nudge, wink, wink of Double Standards is part and parcel of politics and bureaucracy just grinding along. That the wealthy just live & navigate in exalted space that 99.999 of us will ever experience. I won't detail useful examples, as we all know them.
ReplyDeletePerhaps in a bolt of lightning.. I will become elightened, suggest a solution.. but I will issue a grim reminder. There was a truly wealthy man and his wife. Hard working, generous, scions of society, who perhaps assumed the wondrous bubble they floated in.. was well, uh.. 'special' - They were found, dead, tied to their swimming pool fencing, strangled. What caused such a brutal murder - we do not know, likely will never know. But as a student of certain things.. I have some guesses. And in my view, that brutal crime is an example of where Double Standards did not apply. Double Standards were useless, did not, could not.. protect that couple.. instead, the Law of Natural Consequences blew Double Standards out the window. The super wealthy Cooper family is finding that out, but only because investigative journalism encountered them, by chance. Natural Consequence eh ! ! The real standard. in the end...
The exposure of this double standard, Sal, may indeed lead some to shrug and ask what else is new. However, it does serve to illustrate and reinforce the hollow rhetoric our political 'leaders' indulge in so willfully and glibly with nary a thought that they will be exposed. Hence, the ongoing vital role good investigative journalism plays in our society today.
DeleteWho says you can't buy what you want, Lorne?
ReplyDeleteThese days, Owen, only the naive, I think.
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