APPEALS TO REASON ..

APPEALS TO REASON – Part 13
A series of letters and E-mail messages from Canadian victims
of taxes on phantom income to Canadian Government Authorities, at all levels,
appealing for fair treatment and the, often idiotic, replies they received.

Read: Appeals To Reason Part – 1 (preamble) & Parts – 2, to 12 for more background information.
By Victor Drummond ©
May 2009

Synopsis of the events to the present

Part 8: Excerpts from additional published articles that could explain what happened to disillusion former Minister of National Revenue, the Honourable Carol Skelton and possibly the reason she decided not to run for office in the 2008 federal election.

Part 9: Letters to Carol Skelton from other Members of Canada’s 39th Parliament pressuring her to take action to have all Canadian victims of phantom income tax treated fairly.

Part 9 closes part way through reporting on the events following the announcement on May 28 2007 by the Honourable Carol Skelton, Minister of National Revenue and the Honourable James Flaherty, Minister of Finance, of two new government initiatives proclaimed to bring fair taxation to all Canadians.

Part 10 Reveals a possible reason why both Prime Minister Paul Martin and Prime Minister Stephen Harper reneged on their public commitments to “fix” and/or “resolve” the phantom Income tax fiasco.

Part 11 Reveals a sample of letters being sent to the Hon Jim Flaherty describing the distress being caused to honest, hard-working Canadians by the defective taxable benefit legislation and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) policy in applying that legislation to tax phantom income.

Part 12 Provides excerpts from the Hon. Mr. Flaherty’s speech to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, where he preaches “Tax Fairness” for all Canadians while he continues to ignore all appeals from victims of Canada’s unfair policy of taxing phantom income. He thereby has earned himself the title my maternal Mennonite grandmother applied to straight face prevaricators e.g. Flannel Mouth.

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Questions:

(Q1) What is CFET?

Answer:

(A1) The acronym CFET stands for the name of a group of honest, hard-working Canadians who have been levied unjust and unfair taxes on “income” money they never saw.

The group name “Canadians for Fair and Equal Taxes” (CFET) first appeared on February 21 2008 at a “Press Conference” held in the Parliament Hill Press Theatre. The group name was soon thereafter upgraded to: “Canadians for Fair and Equitable Taxation” (CFET) which more accurately, reflected the group’s primary objectives.

(Q2) Where did the CFET members come from?

Answer:

(A2) Initially, there were only eight people that could be classed as members of CFET.
CFET began as of February 21, 2008 when seven members of the group first met face to face in Ottawa Ontario.

The first CFET member is tax victim Robert (Rob) Morse of Toronto Ontario. Rob could not attend the initial group meeting in Ottawa Ontario, as he was out of the country.

Rob did, however, provide an impact statement to be read at the CFET Press conference held in the Parliament Hill Press Theatre on that date.

The second member is Ken Thompson, of Brampton Ontario. Ken read Rob’s impact statement at the press conference.

CFET member number three is Mr. James Thompson, a victim of the tax on phantom income. James, (Jim), Thompson is from Ottawa Ontario.

Member number four is Kevin Hawe, a victim of phantom income taxation, from Victoria British Columbia who arrived with member number five, his father Gary Hawe, from Cobble Hill, a small town on Vancouver Island British Columbia.

Member number six is Mr. Ragui Kamel, a tax victim from Ottawa Ontario.

Member number seven is Mr. Ron Vader, also a phantom income tax victim, from Ottawa Ontario.

Last, but far from least, is CFET member number eight: Carolyn Jarvis, another phantom income tax victim from Ottawa Ontario.

(Q3) How did these initial eight victims, and victim supporters, find each other?

Answer:

(A3) In January 2007, when newspaper articles began to reveal the existence of an exclusive TRO for the SDL Optics/JDSU employee victims Mr. Rob Morse contacted one of the author journalists requesting that any other persons contacting this journalist, about the same article, be given Rob’s name, address, phone number and/or e-mail address.

Ken Thompson was among the first people to contact the journalist and then to contact Rob Morse.

Through the same connection the other above named members of CFET found each other and a press conference was arranged to be held, in the Parliament Hill Press Theatre, as mentioned above.

The Parliament Hill Press Conference was a dismal failure so far as, getting nation wide publicity for the CFET group and, their objective to help the Canadian government make good on their election commitments to provide all Canadians with “fair” taxation.

In spite of CFET’s preparation of Press Kits, with fair tax objectives clearly defined and complete with several tax victims’ impact statements, not one word about this meeting ever appeared in a Canadian Newspaper.

Had it not been for John Robson, producer of a closed circuit television program named: “Its your Government” (IYG) who had a cameraman taking videos at that meeting, there wouldn’t even be an inkling hint, to the public, the initial CFET meeting ever took place.

Producer J. Robson actually fitted in a brief clip from the CFET Press Conference meeting into the IYG program named: “I’ve got a secret.” The video clip didn’t put the CFET purpose, or objectives across but it did show the CFET Members in attendance.

This rather unproductive first meeting of CFET members did have one very positive result, i.e. They got to meet one another and reinforce each other’s determination to see fair taxation a reality for all victimized Canadians.

Shortly after the February 21 2007 CFET meeting members the group produced their own internet web site, i.e. www.cfet.ca complete with a petition for visitors to sign and links to victim’s impact statements, and to related newspaper articles.

The CFET web pages have been upgraded a few times and now there is a link to:- “Sign out Petition” that opens a window with the tab: “Signatures” which in turn opens a page where visitors, victims and supporters can sign their name and post a comment. A person can sign on as “Anonymous” if they prefer and leave a comment, or just read the comments already posted.

As of Good Friday 2009 there were some 334 signers to the CFET Petition with more added almost daily.

The original eight CFET membership has doubled and redoubled several times and new members are being added steadily.

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From it’s inception CFET has been active in many areas of Canadian Political structure and have supported both those Canadians that have been unjustly taxed, and the few members of Canada’s government that support fair taxation, to wage a campaign to truly bring about fair and equalized taxation to all Canadians.

CFET is a nonprofit, social group, that offers free membership to all Canadians, whether actual victims of taxation on phantom income or, supporters of fair and just taxation for all Canadians.

Among the initial eight CFET members were two that had tried the Canadian Court System to obtain justice and fair taxation.

They both found that because the taxable benefit legislation gives the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) the legal right to levy taxes on equities, (shares/options), that have been acquired via employers’ incentive reward plans known as: ESPP’s and/or ESO’s they ended up paying large legal bills and having their appeals denied. The courts were of no help and the bottom line was they were sending good money after bad.

Question (4) Why were the appeals of the two victimized CFET members not upheld by the Canadian Courts of Justice?

Answer (4) Until Canada’s defective taxable benefit legislation is “fixed/resolved” the Canadian court system is of no help to victimized Canadians. The courts merely rule that no laws have been broken and therefore the victims have no basis for an appeal.

The “Tax Court of Canada” mandate states that financial distress caused to Canadians by reason of taxes levied, can be taken into account.

If the justice ‘hearing a tax appeal’ feels like revoking the taxes levied he/she can so rule. This, however, is a very hit and miss form of justice and only works to add to the overall system unfairness as not all victimized taxpayers are treated equally.

Those appellants that were prudent and set money aside had little chance of having their appeal upheld while the opposite is true for those who spent their last Looney.

That is why the focus of the CFET group is for having Canada’s defective taxable benefit legislation amended to put an end to taxing all honest, hard-working Canadian’s on so called “Earned Income” that was neither “earned” nor “income” of any kind, e.g. phantom income.

Question (5) What has the CFET group done to achieve “Fair and Equitable Taxation”?

Answer (5) Shortly after the CFET group was formed on February 21, 2008 a founding member, Ragui Kamel, managed to be a guest commentator on a closed circuit TV program named:- “Alec Saunders Squawk Box”.

As a courtesy to Ragui Kamel, who had participated in several previous “Squawk Box” programs, Alec Saunders produced a special Edition on April 7, 2008, with the title: “Fair Taxation of Stock Options in Canada” with Mr. Kamel as the featured guest speaker.

Interested readers may listen to the podcast and read the comments posted by visiting web page:- http://saunderslog.com/2008/04/04/squawk-box-special-edition-fair-taxation-of-stock-options-in-canada/

There are many actions taken by individual Canadian victims of phantom income taxation, and the CFET group of victims and supporters, following the April 7 2008, Squawk Box Podcast.

Some of the more notable ones are in following parts of the APPEALS TO REASON series and form an ongoing flow of answers to question (5).

Victor Drummond ©