Quote:
Originally Posted by opendoor
People aren't suggesting changing charity deduction rules. They're suggesting changing things that allow companies to hide money offshore by never returning their profits to Canada or the US, stopping schemes which allow companies to defer taxes for years into the future and take advantage of potentially lower tax rates (I believe the current Conservative government is working on this right now), preventing the artificial inflation of overseas tax credits which lower the amount owed here, stopping businesses and executives from exploiting the myriad of loopholes that exist relating to stock options and how they're deducted and taxed, among many other things.
There are thousands of ways businesses can avoid paying taxes and people want to stop that. Some of these schemes give an unfair advantage to multi-national big businesses at the expense of smaller Canadian owned firms and people would like to see that stopped and a more level playing field introduced. The current government to their credit is starting to do some of these things, but there's still tons of room for improvement, and none of it involves removing charity deductions.
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You know, I'm hearing this tossed around as a talking point for this "movement", but I really wonder how true this actually is. I'm not an accountant or tax lawyer, but my understanding is that in Canada, these so called loopholes don't really exist to the same extent.
The other question is what sort of chilling effect it would have on industry to basically impose additional taxes (closing means of reducing tax exposure is effectivly increasing taxes for those businesses). I get the sense people think companies exist in a vaccum. We live in a global economy these days. If it becomes too expensive to operate in Canada, what's stopping companies from moving where they can find cheaper labour and lower operating costs? Obviously this is already happening, but it's not like you can magically start charging more taxes and then require companies to stay put. We are being underbid by emerging economies and low skilled work that pays well is really a thing of the past. Adapt, or starve.