Quote:
Originally Posted by onetwo_threefour
I'm not a huge fan of flags of convenience myself, but if one is a pure free-marketer, one could say that taking advantage of better tax rates elsewhere, when available, woyld apply pressure to the Cdn government to have competitive business tax rates to avoid the loss of that part of their tax base.
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Agreed. Free and open with minimal capital controls are wonderful things for the world.
Sometimes I ask my old man about what it was like fiscally back in the day in Canada and realize that if you go back to even as recent as 20 years ago, we had tax brackets that weren't indexed for inflation, so as time went on the middle class kept creeping into the highest tax brackets, RRSP ownership restrictions that limited your ability to invest in foreign markets to only 18% of your RRSP portfolio, and of course no TFSA's (Which in my opinion are really the greatest thing the government has done for the middle class in years). The only way to hide from punitive taxation it seems was to legally structure your assets offshore.
Everyone wants to tax and punish the so-called 'rich', which when put that way makes the 'rich' out to be these distant Mr. Burns types who live high on the hill in mansions and are not relatable. The above measures however were actually punatively taxing your nieghbors, friends and family, the middle and upper-middle classes.