Wednesday, July 29, 2009
SOMETHING EVERY CANADIAN VOTER..
SOMETHING EVERY CANADIAN VOTER SHOULD KNOW
before voting in Canada’s next Federal Election.
by Victor Drummond © in support of
“Canadians for Fair and Equitable Taxation” (CFET)
July 2009
(1) Are you aware that Canada is one of the last of the G7 Nations to levy a tax on “phantom” income?
Note: “Phantom” income is money that a taxpayer might have received, in hard cash, if they had cashed in equities they received by way of their employer’s incentive rewards program(s) such as an “Employee Shares Purchase Plan” (ESPP) or an “Employee Shares Option” (ESO) agreement BUT is money that never actually materialized.
Taxes on “phantom” income frequently exceed the victim’s actual real gross income for the entire taxation year by several times over.
(2) Are you aware that both Canada and the United States of America both had defective tax legislation that resulted in select taxpayers being taxed on “phantom” income?
Note: After it was reported that the suicide of two American taxpayers may have been the result of being taxed into financial distress by taxes levied on “phantom” income the U.S. Government finally passed bills amending their defective legislation and fairly compensating those that had been victimized under the old law.
Reference www.reformAMT.org for details.
The U.S. government corrective action was implemented last October, (2008) just as they were facing the worst economic downturn in recent history. By comparison Canada’s economy is in much better condition to withstand such a financial correction.
(3) Are you aware that in spite of appeals from numerous Canadian victims of Canada’s equally defective taxable benefit legislation that Canada’s Minister of Finance, The Honourable James Flaherty still declares Canada’s tax policy of taxing “phantom” income is “fair” and refuses to do anything about the problem?
Reference www.cfet.ca
Do you agree with Mr. Flaherty?
Does it make any sense to apply a tax defined as “Income Tax” on purely potential, but nonexistent, money? Money that was never real income and likely never will be?
This issue should be taken to a Public Referendum but it likely never will be because our federal politicians, including opposition party leaders, decline to acknowledge the issue..
So while visiting the CFET web page click on the “sign our Petition” link, complete the registration section on the petition page, read the comments posted there, and leave your own comment on this issue.
We truly want to know how many Canadians agree, or disagree, with our Minister of Finance.
Is taxing honest, hard-working, Canadians on money they never saw “fair” and “justified” in the opinion of a majority of Canadians? Not Likley.
Victor Drummond ©
Sunday, July 26, 2009
KILLING THIS CASH COW...
KILLING THIS CASH COW IS FAIR
Why is Canada’s Government reluctant to end
abusing Honest, Hard-Working Canadians
through taxation of phantom income?
by Victor Drummond ©
July 2009
There are few situations where it becomes as difficult to see the logical answer, to a high profile question, as this one. A prize case of not seeing the forest for the trees.
The high profile question is this: Why would two successive Right Honourable Prime Ministers of Canada publicly voice a commitment to correct Canada’s unfair taxation of pretend “phantom” income and then both of them do an about face and go back on their word?
Especially the Right Honourable Stephen Harper who had actually started to “resolve” the problem by approving a “Tax Remission Order” (TRO) revoking the unfair taxation, of pretend income, for 37 former employees of the SDL Optics Inc./JDS Uniphase Corporation.
Finally after months of pondering this mystery a very logical explanation literally jumped out of the blue.
As one of my former co-workers would say, “The penny finally dropped”.
The red-herring explanation for such un-Canadian conduct, is the government’s desire to collect all those millions of tax dollars unjustly extorted from honest, hard-working, Canadians who failed to cash in their ESPP/ESO equities on the date of “exercise” and are now being taxed on huge pretend profits, i.e. “phantom income”.
But eventually I said to myself: “Why would any government put their reputation on the skids just to be able to report they managed to create a surplus budget?” “Why indeed?
Especially during a world wide economic crisis that makes a surplus budget practically impossible.”
Why, when a huge deficit budget is forecast, would a government not use this opportunity to restore fairness to an outrageously unjust tax policy, and thereby come out of the crisis smelling like roses, while at the same time putting economy boosting, discretionary, cash back into the hands of its rightful owners?” Why indeed?
The answer, as it turns out, is so extremely simple I nearly missed it altogether. But just think about this phantom tax scenario for a moment. The phantom tax money, extorted from the taxpayer, goes into the government treasury to be used for day to day government disbursement.
The tax money doesn’t find its way into the personal income of any government members of the House of Commons (HOC), or the Prime Minister or any members of his cabinet. Not one cent of that money ever appears in the coffers of any federal political parties.
So why resist doing the honest, decent, and right thing, i.e. correct the defective legislation, and put an end to taxing pretend income and fairly compensate those already victimized by it? As the U.S.A. government has already done for their victims of phantom income taxation. Ref: www.reformAMT.org
There is a very simple answer. The present system creates an on going,field day for Canada's legal fraternity.
All one must do for the reason to become very obvious is to follow the sequence of events when phantom tax victims decide to fight for their rights and begin a quest for fair taxation and justice.
A victim's first avenue of recourse is to appeal to the Chief of Appeals Officers, located at many offices of Revenue Canada, right across this fair land.
(*) Depending more upon the mood and location of the Appeals Officer than upon the merits of the appellants case the appellant may or, more likely, may not receive a favourable decision. (*)Ref:- Federal Auditors report 2009
A typical phantom tax victim, having been denied a fair deal by the Revenue Canada Chief of Appeals Officer, may then apply to the “Tax Court of Canada” for a hearing and judgment of their case.
Victims considering taking their case to the Tax Court are advised they may present their case with, or without, a lawyer but the Tax Court of Canada preliminary recommendations advises appellants to engage the services of a good tax lawyer to improve their prospect of obtaining a favourable ruling.
A favourable ruling, however, very seldom happens.
An alternative to appealing to the Tax Court of Canada is for victims to apply to have their case tried by an ordinary court of justice. In either case the victim is advised to use a tax lawyer to present their case.
Lawyers go not come cheap. Two victims, that I am aware of, went the court route for justice, spent tens of thousands of dollars for legal services and still had their appeals denied. Their appeals were rejected on the grounds the taxes levied were in keeping with existing law and consequently their appeal was denied.
Bottom line: the CRA kept their ill-gotten loot and the legal fraternity was provided some very lucrative business. This cash-cow for Canada’s legal fraternity is on-going and can be milked repeatedly so long as Canada’s defective taxable benefit legislation remains as-is and new victims are created year after year.
Would any lawyer, in his right mind, support correcting any law that maintains this lucrative cash cow?
Do you suppose a member of the Canadian legal fraternity, who happened to be elected to the position of Right Honourable Prime Minister of Canada, would keep any commitment to “fix” or “resolve” this outrageously unfair but lucrative situation?
If the problem was resolved by any Canadian Political Party leader do you suppose the party coffers would receive any monetary support from the Canadian legal fraternity?
What about voting support from lawyers, their family members their friends. associates and office employees ad infinitem?
Do you suppose their numbers are significant enough to make a difference to the outcome of a federal election?
The Right Honourable Paul Martin succeeded the Right honourable Joseph, Jacques, Jean Chrétien as Prime Minister of Canada. The phantom tax issue arose under the watch of Prime Minister Chrétien who in addition to a few other short-comings was also a Lawyer, i.e. QC, LLD.
Was the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien aware of the unfair taxation of phantom income in 2001?
If so what did he do about it?
Answer: Yes he was fully aware of this insidious tax trap. He did nothing more than refer all appeals for fair taxation to his Minister of finance the Honourable Paul Martin for consideration.
The Honourable Paul Martin is also a Lawyer, i.e. LL.B . What did the Honourable Paul Martin do about this tax fiasco?
Answer: nothing beyond introducing a phantom income tax deferral option to permit those who where in financial distress to put off paying the tax year by year. The tax levied on phantom income remained unabated and might also collect penalties along the way.
When the Right Honourable Paul Martin became Prime Minister his Minister of Finance was the Honourable Ralph E. Goodale who held that position from 2003 to 2006 until a change of government took place.
Surprise, surprise, the Honourable Ralph E. Goodale is also a Lawyer with a law degree from the University of Saskatchewan. It comes as no surprise then to discover Mr. Goodale did absolutely nothing to correct the unfair taxation of pretend income.
In 2005 the federal Conservative party campaigned on reduced and fair taxation before the 2006 federal election and as soon as the party leader, Stephen Harper, was sworn in as the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, he blundered into a “fair Taxation” request by the Honourable Gary Lunn, MP, CP for the riding of Saanich, Gulf-Islands, British Columbia. Prime Minister Harper then appeared to be well on his way to fulfilling his pre-election commitment(s) to the Canadian people.
Note: The Right Honourable Stephen Harper is one of the few people to become prime minister of Canada who does not have a law degree and is not affiliated with Canada’s legal fraternity in any way.
There were some 37 former employees’ of the defunct SDL Optics Inc. JDS Uniphase Corporation plant in MP. Lunn’s riding that were victims of the unfair taxation on pretend income. Gary had applied for a Tax Remission Order (TRO), to revoke this unfair tax, and related penalties for those 37 victimized employees.
Either without the advice, or ignoring the advice of his Minister of Finance -- the Honourable James Flaherty, a lawyer with 20 or more years of prior experience -- Stephen Harper approved Gary Lunn’s TRO and had it signed into law by Canada’s Governor General.
At the time this TRO was proudly publicly announced by both MP Gary Lunn and Prime Minister Stephen Harper there were grand speeches made and great promises made to the effect: “It is not in the government’s interest to tax money never seen.” and “we’ll resolve” this issue.
Shortly thereafter, however, an article appeared in the Victoria Times Colonist Newspaper (Dec 7 2007 issue)under the title: “JDS Deal dangerous precedent, Ottawa told.”
Quoting a few choice lines from this article: “The decision recently published as a ‘remission order’ in the Canada Gazette, was approved by cabinet despite objections from officials at Finance and Canada Revenue Agency.”
“Senior bureaucrats warned such a decision was unfair to other taxpayers and set a dangerous precedent for employees of other high-tech companies who watched their fortunes rise and fall during the dot-com boom and subsequent bust.”
It should be obvious to anyone, who takes the time and trouble to get the facts, that no one really believes taxing honest, hard-working Canadians, on money they never saw, is “fair” or “justified”.
Not even those unscrupulous government leaders, who saw this tax booby-trap come to the surface in the High-Tech market crash of 2000, really believed it was a fair, and justified tax policy.
BUT even the naive new Prime Minister, elected on the promise of lower and fair taxation, lost his will to follow through with his commitment to “resolve” this problem when brought under fire by members of his “Department of Finance” and “Senior Bureaucrats in the Canada Revenue Agency.”
There appears to be only one way for Canadians to free their elected representatives from the grip of a powerful lobby group that has a vested interest in keeping Canada’s unfair, outrageous policy of taxing phantom income ongoing.
And that, one way, is for the average Canadian of voting age to inform their local federal party candidate: “Commit to correcting Canada’s defective taxable benefit legislation, putting an end to taxing honest, hard-working Canadians on money they never saw, and fairly compensating those who have been victimized by this practice since the year 2000" if you want my vote.
The U.S. Government has corrected their comparable tax legislation and Canada has no excuse for not treating Canadian victims just as fairly.
Ref: www.cfet.ca and www.reformAMT.org
Canada’s policy of unfair and unjust taxation has become a private self-serving Cash Cow that must be exterminated if the “right” of every Canadian taxpayer, to fair and equal treatment under Canadian Law, is ever to be fully realized.
See you at the next federal election voting polls O’Grady
Victor Drummond ©
Why is Canada’s Government reluctant to end
abusing Honest, Hard-Working Canadians
through taxation of phantom income?
by Victor Drummond ©
July 2009
There are few situations where it becomes as difficult to see the logical answer, to a high profile question, as this one. A prize case of not seeing the forest for the trees.
The high profile question is this: Why would two successive Right Honourable Prime Ministers of Canada publicly voice a commitment to correct Canada’s unfair taxation of pretend “phantom” income and then both of them do an about face and go back on their word?
Especially the Right Honourable Stephen Harper who had actually started to “resolve” the problem by approving a “Tax Remission Order” (TRO) revoking the unfair taxation, of pretend income, for 37 former employees of the SDL Optics Inc./JDS Uniphase Corporation.
Finally after months of pondering this mystery a very logical explanation literally jumped out of the blue.
As one of my former co-workers would say, “The penny finally dropped”.
The red-herring explanation for such un-Canadian conduct, is the government’s desire to collect all those millions of tax dollars unjustly extorted from honest, hard-working, Canadians who failed to cash in their ESPP/ESO equities on the date of “exercise” and are now being taxed on huge pretend profits, i.e. “phantom income”.
But eventually I said to myself: “Why would any government put their reputation on the skids just to be able to report they managed to create a surplus budget?” “Why indeed?
Especially during a world wide economic crisis that makes a surplus budget practically impossible.”
Why, when a huge deficit budget is forecast, would a government not use this opportunity to restore fairness to an outrageously unjust tax policy, and thereby come out of the crisis smelling like roses, while at the same time putting economy boosting, discretionary, cash back into the hands of its rightful owners?” Why indeed?
The answer, as it turns out, is so extremely simple I nearly missed it altogether. But just think about this phantom tax scenario for a moment. The phantom tax money, extorted from the taxpayer, goes into the government treasury to be used for day to day government disbursement.
The tax money doesn’t find its way into the personal income of any government members of the House of Commons (HOC), or the Prime Minister or any members of his cabinet. Not one cent of that money ever appears in the coffers of any federal political parties.
So why resist doing the honest, decent, and right thing, i.e. correct the defective legislation, and put an end to taxing pretend income and fairly compensate those already victimized by it? As the U.S.A. government has already done for their victims of phantom income taxation. Ref: www.reformAMT.org
There is a very simple answer. The present system creates an on going,field day for Canada's legal fraternity.
All one must do for the reason to become very obvious is to follow the sequence of events when phantom tax victims decide to fight for their rights and begin a quest for fair taxation and justice.
A victim's first avenue of recourse is to appeal to the Chief of Appeals Officers, located at many offices of Revenue Canada, right across this fair land.
(*) Depending more upon the mood and location of the Appeals Officer than upon the merits of the appellants case the appellant may or, more likely, may not receive a favourable decision. (*)Ref:- Federal Auditors report 2009
A typical phantom tax victim, having been denied a fair deal by the Revenue Canada Chief of Appeals Officer, may then apply to the “Tax Court of Canada” for a hearing and judgment of their case.
Victims considering taking their case to the Tax Court are advised they may present their case with, or without, a lawyer but the Tax Court of Canada preliminary recommendations advises appellants to engage the services of a good tax lawyer to improve their prospect of obtaining a favourable ruling.
A favourable ruling, however, very seldom happens.
An alternative to appealing to the Tax Court of Canada is for victims to apply to have their case tried by an ordinary court of justice. In either case the victim is advised to use a tax lawyer to present their case.
Lawyers go not come cheap. Two victims, that I am aware of, went the court route for justice, spent tens of thousands of dollars for legal services and still had their appeals denied. Their appeals were rejected on the grounds the taxes levied were in keeping with existing law and consequently their appeal was denied.
Bottom line: the CRA kept their ill-gotten loot and the legal fraternity was provided some very lucrative business. This cash-cow for Canada’s legal fraternity is on-going and can be milked repeatedly so long as Canada’s defective taxable benefit legislation remains as-is and new victims are created year after year.
Would any lawyer, in his right mind, support correcting any law that maintains this lucrative cash cow?
Do you suppose a member of the Canadian legal fraternity, who happened to be elected to the position of Right Honourable Prime Minister of Canada, would keep any commitment to “fix” or “resolve” this outrageously unfair but lucrative situation?
If the problem was resolved by any Canadian Political Party leader do you suppose the party coffers would receive any monetary support from the Canadian legal fraternity?
What about voting support from lawyers, their family members their friends. associates and office employees ad infinitem?
Do you suppose their numbers are significant enough to make a difference to the outcome of a federal election?
The Right Honourable Paul Martin succeeded the Right honourable Joseph, Jacques, Jean Chrétien as Prime Minister of Canada. The phantom tax issue arose under the watch of Prime Minister Chrétien who in addition to a few other short-comings was also a Lawyer, i.e. QC, LLD.
Was the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien aware of the unfair taxation of phantom income in 2001?
If so what did he do about it?
Answer: Yes he was fully aware of this insidious tax trap. He did nothing more than refer all appeals for fair taxation to his Minister of finance the Honourable Paul Martin for consideration.
The Honourable Paul Martin is also a Lawyer, i.e. LL.B . What did the Honourable Paul Martin do about this tax fiasco?
Answer: nothing beyond introducing a phantom income tax deferral option to permit those who where in financial distress to put off paying the tax year by year. The tax levied on phantom income remained unabated and might also collect penalties along the way.
When the Right Honourable Paul Martin became Prime Minister his Minister of Finance was the Honourable Ralph E. Goodale who held that position from 2003 to 2006 until a change of government took place.
Surprise, surprise, the Honourable Ralph E. Goodale is also a Lawyer with a law degree from the University of Saskatchewan. It comes as no surprise then to discover Mr. Goodale did absolutely nothing to correct the unfair taxation of pretend income.
In 2005 the federal Conservative party campaigned on reduced and fair taxation before the 2006 federal election and as soon as the party leader, Stephen Harper, was sworn in as the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, he blundered into a “fair Taxation” request by the Honourable Gary Lunn, MP, CP for the riding of Saanich, Gulf-Islands, British Columbia. Prime Minister Harper then appeared to be well on his way to fulfilling his pre-election commitment(s) to the Canadian people.
Note: The Right Honourable Stephen Harper is one of the few people to become prime minister of Canada who does not have a law degree and is not affiliated with Canada’s legal fraternity in any way.
There were some 37 former employees’ of the defunct SDL Optics Inc. JDS Uniphase Corporation plant in MP. Lunn’s riding that were victims of the unfair taxation on pretend income. Gary had applied for a Tax Remission Order (TRO), to revoke this unfair tax, and related penalties for those 37 victimized employees.
Either without the advice, or ignoring the advice of his Minister of Finance -- the Honourable James Flaherty, a lawyer with 20 or more years of prior experience -- Stephen Harper approved Gary Lunn’s TRO and had it signed into law by Canada’s Governor General.
At the time this TRO was proudly publicly announced by both MP Gary Lunn and Prime Minister Stephen Harper there were grand speeches made and great promises made to the effect: “It is not in the government’s interest to tax money never seen.” and “we’ll resolve” this issue.
Shortly thereafter, however, an article appeared in the Victoria Times Colonist Newspaper (Dec 7 2007 issue)under the title: “JDS Deal dangerous precedent, Ottawa told.”
Quoting a few choice lines from this article: “The decision recently published as a ‘remission order’ in the Canada Gazette, was approved by cabinet despite objections from officials at Finance and Canada Revenue Agency.”
“Senior bureaucrats warned such a decision was unfair to other taxpayers and set a dangerous precedent for employees of other high-tech companies who watched their fortunes rise and fall during the dot-com boom and subsequent bust.”
It should be obvious to anyone, who takes the time and trouble to get the facts, that no one really believes taxing honest, hard-working Canadians, on money they never saw, is “fair” or “justified”.
Not even those unscrupulous government leaders, who saw this tax booby-trap come to the surface in the High-Tech market crash of 2000, really believed it was a fair, and justified tax policy.
BUT even the naive new Prime Minister, elected on the promise of lower and fair taxation, lost his will to follow through with his commitment to “resolve” this problem when brought under fire by members of his “Department of Finance” and “Senior Bureaucrats in the Canada Revenue Agency.”
There appears to be only one way for Canadians to free their elected representatives from the grip of a powerful lobby group that has a vested interest in keeping Canada’s unfair, outrageous policy of taxing phantom income ongoing.
And that, one way, is for the average Canadian of voting age to inform their local federal party candidate: “Commit to correcting Canada’s defective taxable benefit legislation, putting an end to taxing honest, hard-working Canadians on money they never saw, and fairly compensating those who have been victimized by this practice since the year 2000" if you want my vote.
The U.S. Government has corrected their comparable tax legislation and Canada has no excuse for not treating Canadian victims just as fairly.
Ref: www.cfet.ca and www.reformAMT.org
Canada’s policy of unfair and unjust taxation has become a private self-serving Cash Cow that must be exterminated if the “right” of every Canadian taxpayer, to fair and equal treatment under Canadian Law, is ever to be fully realized.
See you at the next federal election voting polls O’Grady
Victor Drummond ©
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
ARE WE THERE...
ARE WE THERE YET?
A commentary on where Canada’s Government
has come from and where we are now.
by Victor Drummond (c)
July 2009
A recent copy of Readers Digest, Canadian edition, carried a cartoon a depicting a family just pulling out of their driveway in a minivan, with a five or six year old girl in the back seat, surrounded by holiday and camping gear.
The girl, obviously anxious to get out of the vehicle and get started on her vacation is illustrated as saying “are we there yet?”
Of course the illustrated situation is intended to bring a smile to the reader as the vehicle has not yet cleared the home driveway.
When it comes to our home and native land the question: “Are we there yet?” takes on a more serious aspect. Where are we Canadians, as a society, now? Where are we going? And how will we know when we arrive?
A good place to begin the search for the answer to these questions is:
(1)“where did we all come from?
Delving back into prehistoric ages, we are told, the first humans to arrive in the land masses we now call North and South America arrived from the Asian land mass by crossing at a place now known as the Bering Straight.
Skipping a millennium or two of human evolution, exploration and immigration Canada was established in more or less its present form on July 1, 1867 when the British North America Act paved the way to establish confederation and the Dominion of Canada came into being.
By the time of confederation Canada had become a land populated by people of many races and many cultural origins who came here seeking a place of greater freedom and opportunity. The more recent arrivals were mainly people from countries located in Europe who were seeking freedom from religious and political oppression.
From the first day the Dominion of Canada came into existence most of Canada’s elected federal political leaders have run for election on a political platform which promised the voter a higher standard of living, protection from persecution, abuse of power, better laws and an honest, considerate government. The very things our citizens had come here to find.
For the most part Canada’s prime ministers have lived up to voter’s expectations.
Our very first Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Sir John A. MacDonald, had a bit of a reputation for imbibing a bit too much alcohol, a bit too often, but all-in-all not a bad government leader. At least he didn’t get into notorious financial and/or social mischief situations.
The Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his guidance of Canada’s international affairs during his term in office.
The Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker was a strong minded person, of dignity and honour, who incurred the displeasure of American President, John F. Kennedy when Diefenbaker refused to allow Bomarc Missiles to be stationed in Canada.
Considerable progress had been made by Canada’s people and elected government, between July 1, 1867 and 1957, towards creating a society as close to ideal as it is practical to get.
There is not doubt in my mind that Honest John Diefenbaker would never tolerate any form of mistreatment imposed, by any part of his government, on honest, hard-working Canadian taxpayers.
Up to the time the Right Honourable Joseph, Jacques, Jean, Chretien served as Prime Minister, (1993 – 2003) I had never heard of Canada’s government, or any of its agencies, imposing a so-called “income tax” on money that never was actual income.
The Canadian government and citizens had made remarkable progress towards creating the kind of living conditions the vast majority of Canadians wanted. The objective of living in peace and harmony enjoying freedom from abuse and oppression, enjoying the rightful fruits of our labour – was in sight and we had almost arrived. Yes Canadians were almost “there”.
Were it not for an obscure defect in Canada’s Income Tax Act, dealing with taxable benefits, it would have been safe to say we were “there”.
But then in the year 2000 the Hi-Tech stock market boom went bust and the booby-trap hidden in the defective taxable benefit legislation came into play robbing thousands of honest, hard-working Canadians of their savings, homes, marriages, and denying them the fruits of their hard work to which they were justifiably entitled.
As soon as Canadians were levied “income” tax on pretend “phantom” income and their government were not “there”. Now both were, and still are, actually on the wrong path and travelling in the wrong direction.
Victims of phantom taxation lodged appeal after appeal to the Canadian government members, from the Prime Minister all the way down to the back benchers in Canada’s House of Commons (HOC).
The Chrétien and succeeding Paul Martin, Liberal governments, paid no attention to the appeals of their victimized constituents and offered no effective corrective action to restore justice.
Unfortunately even a change of government, in 2006, did not provide Canadians with a Prime Minister, and Cabinet Ministers that had the will and determination to correct this insidious and outrageous tax policy.
Canada already had a world stage image as a nation of peaceful, honest, decent, compassionate, fair minded people who support a government ready to provide humanitarian relief to people of other nations whenever their greater need arises. With one glaring exception this high praise of Canada’s people and government is well deserved.
The ideal objective is for every Canadian to be able to enjoy the fruits of their labour in peace and comfort in-so-far as it is within the power of our elected representatives to provide laws and policies that make such conditions possible.
When every member elected to Canada’s House of Commons (HOC) fulfills their duty Canadians can honestly say we have arrived: “we are now there.”
Unfortunately members of Canada’s HOC are not accustomed to acting according to conscience when their conscience conflicts with current government policy, and/or their political party line, on important issues.
It appears Canadians will never get "there" unless, and until, the majority of our voting population takes action to inform their local Member of Parliament: “enough is enough”.
Tell them: “Stop taxing honest, hard-working Canadians on money that never existed, “phantom income” as the United States Government has already done or you will not receive my support in the next federal election.” Ref: www.cfet.ca and www.reformAMT.org for more information.
Until this atrocious tax policy and miscarriage of justice is corrected Canadians can never get “there”
The answer to the title question: “No we are not there yet.”
See you at the voting polls in the next federal election O’Grady.
Victor Drummond ©
Sunday, July 19, 2009
THE ART OF CREATIVE..
THE ART OF CREATIVE ACCOUNTING
A commentary on the rationales used by CEO’s
and Government to get something from/for nothing.
By Victor Drummond (c)
July 2009
The practice of rewarding corporation officers and/or employees for above average performance has been accepted by most governments and the average person as fair and justified.
Average performance criteria are easy to establish. Unions negotiating with employers, over the years, have generally arrived at mutually acceptable working conditions, perks and benefits that employees are expected to deliver and receive.
In the United States of America, and Canada, a typical working day begins at 8.00am with a mid-morning 15 minute rest-room (coffee) break around 10.00 am and a 1 hour Lunch Break at 12.00pm.
The afternoon work session resumes at 1.00pm with a mid-afternoon 15 minute rest-room break around 3.00pm and the work day ends at 5.00pm. This constitutes a typical 8 hour work day for the average employee.
A typical 40 hour work week consists of 5 work days, generally beginning on a Monday Morning and finishing on a Friday afternoon. There are variations to this routine which include such alternatives as shift work, and work weeks that do not begin on a Monday.
Conventional working conditions also include a 14 day paid vacation in the work-year. This perk is normally included in union contracts and is also a feature in Canada’s labour laws.
When typical employee performance enters into the picture an employer may temporarily hire a time and motion specialist to produce a performance table displaying below-average, average, and above average employee performance. Factors such as units produced per shift and unit quality are considered when producing a performance report.
Armed with a time-study report the employer may then add other factors, such as employee attendance, lateness, attitude towards others, and personal decorum in order produce criteria for assigning outstanding performance reward(s).
It has been a long established practice of corporations headed by a Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to approve profit sharing rewards if the corporation meets or exceeds growth and/or profit targets for the prior year. It would not be unusual for a CEO and/or CFO to receive a performance bonus of $100,000, and more, when the corporation exceeded monetary and/or sales targets by a substantial margin.
These performance bonuses fall under the classification of “Incentive Reward Programs” which not only serve to reward the highly skilled executive for the results obtained but also deter the person from leaving the corporation for another position with a competitor.
CEO’s and CFO’s were not the only corporation employees to be offered incentive reward perks. Salesmen are often given cash bonuses when they exceed their monthly sales quota and restaurant employees are often provided free, or reduced cost, meals in lieu of higher wages.
It became very common for Hi-Tech Corporations to offer key employees the opportunity to acquire shares in their employer corporation, during and after the extended stock market boom in the Communications field from 1985 through June of the year 2000.
As the boom progressed the raiding of Corporations skilled employees became commonplace and in order to deter valued employees from accepting hiring bonuses, and additional employment perks offered by competitors employers expanded their incentive reward programs to include most employees, not just the executive and scientific staff.
In mid-July 2000, the Hi-Tech stock market boom began to falter and corporations engaged in the communications field found their sales declining along with their financial forecasts and their shares losing value on the worlds stock markets.
CEO’s and CFO’s that had become accustomed to receiving six figure salaries plus five to six figure performance bonuses suddenly found themselves faced with salary cuts, plant closings, employee termination payouts and encouraging employees, entitled to pensions, to retire.
In consideration of this distressful situation with potential loss of performance bonuses a number of CEO’s managed to have their board of directors approve the upkeep of their performance bonuses.
After all was said and done these were the same leaders of industry that had brought their organizations from obscure communications corporations to world leaders in their field.
Organizations such as JDS Optics, a relatively unknown organization in 1980 became a world leader in the field of fibre optic data transmission by 1999 as the JDS Uniphase Corporation, in Canada and the U.S.A.
The Northern Electric Company, supplier of Telephones and switching systems to Canada’s Bell Telephone, and Provincial Telephone Systems, had grown several times larger under the title of Nortel Networks Inc.
Were not the highly skilled executives, of corporations with this kind of track record, still needed in time of decline to guide these ships of commerce through the rough times ahead?
With a bit of warped logic one could be convinced now that the economy was beating these organizations into oblivion the present CEO’s were even more valuable than before. So while the corporate ship was sinking it was still believed appropriate to keep them in place by way of the usual performance incentive bonuses.
This piece of creative accounting went unchallenged, for the first five or so years of the current economic depression, but recently those with clearer heads have raised the alarm regarding how ridiculous it has been, and still is, to pay performance bonuses to executives that can not perform in this economy. And the money for these bonuses is being paid out of taxpayers money supplied to these corporations, as bail-out money, to help them even survive.
Some members of Canada’s House of Commons (HOC) have gone on record as condemning paying performance bonuses where no creditable performance has been provided and condemning corporation executives for their creative accounting logic to pay themselves a performance bonus from nonexistent corporate funds.
But wait a moment. Where do any Canadian HOC members find the right to condemn anyone for taking money from a nonexistent source of funds? Where have these minions of decency, honesty, integrety and righteousness been for the past seven or eight years while the government of Canada has been taxing honest ,hard working Canadians huge amounts, in real dollars, on nonexistent “phantom” income?
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. At least the corporate executives, who accepted taxpayers bail out money to pay themselves performance bonuses, did not send bailiff’s to expropriate taxpayers money and/or property to collect tax money on income that never existed.
The creative corporate executives did not directly force anyone to deplete their retirement savings to pay a tax and/or penalty on money they never saw.
My dear MP’s. If you can sit silent while your own organization abuses Canadian taxpayers with the application of warped logic that is more creative accounting than that used by some Corporate leaders -- to maintain their performance bonuses in the face of needing a government bail-out -- then you have no right to condemn those corrupt corporate leaders.
And my dear readers. If you can vote for your local candidate, running for election to Canada’s House of Commons, without demanding they provide you, and all Canadians, with proper representation, then you have and will continue to have the kind of government you deserve.
See you at the election polls for the next federal election, O’Grady
Victor Drummond ©
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
UNFAIR TAXATION CORRECTION -- UNWILLING..
UNFAIR TAXATION -- UNWILLING OR UNABLE TO CORRECT
Perhaps I have misread the Canadian Government and Federal Party Leaders.
A commentary on the Canadian Governments Failure to correct
the grossly unfair policy of taxing phantom income.
By Victor Drummond ©
July 2009
From the beginning of the Federal Conservative Party 2005 Pre-election campaign the words: “Lower Taxes”, and “Canada’s Fairness Taxation Plan” have permeated nearly every public and private speech made by the Honourable James Flaherty, Canada’s Minister of Finance.
Taking him at his word was a big mistake. But Why?
He obviously does not really believe that levying huge “income” taxes on money that was never and probably never will be actual “income” is “fair”. He made that clear when he allowed the Tax Remission Order (TRO) initiated by the Hon Gary Lunn, CP, MP for the riding of Saanich Gulf-Islands to proceed to completion.
Then in spite of tentative commitments by the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, who was quoted by a journalist of the Victoria Times Colonist, newspaper, as saying: “We’ll get it resolved” referring to the unfair exclusion of thousands of other victims of the same tax trap.
Instead, however, the Hon James Flaherty allowed senior bureaucrats in the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and in his own ministry to warn the government against proceeding to correct the problem by declaring the Gary Lunn TRO “set a dangerous precedent”.
Why the about face? At first glance I thought it was a question of political greed. But now that the economy has tanked, and the government is looking for ways to restore economic stability: even going so far as to accept a huge multi-billion dollar deficit budget forecast, the issue is no so clear.
If the government is willing to dish out billions of dollars to keep corporations alive, producing items for public consumption, why would they not also dish out “fair” and "justified" tax refunds to provide the Canadian victims, of phantom income taxation, with discretionary funds to purchase those otherwise surplus products?
The sense of this action being it would not only restore the governments credibility, and help boost the economy it would fulfill the governments commitment to provide reduced and truly fair taxation and last but not least it would restore Canada’s image on the world stage as a decent and just country governed by decent, considerate and compassionate leaders.
But not one Canadian federal party leader, or Member of the House of Commons has initiated a government, or members bill, to correct our defective “taxable benefit” legislation and fairly compensate those who have been victimized by it. Even though the United States Government has recently taken that kind of corrective action regarding their comparable defective “Alternative Minimum Tax” (AMT) legislation. Ref:- www.reformAMT.org
Now that is a mystery. There are tons of political hay to be gained for federal opposition parties by painting the current government into the corner they created via their “Canada’s Fair Tax Plan” and failure to deliver.
None of the opposition leaders or members has seized this opportunity. Why not?
This situation now raises the prospect the answer is not because they are unwilling to go this route to 24 Sussex Drive it is much more likely they all know something that no one is daring to say: They are all unable to deliver on this commitment for some obscure reason.
In order to deliver fair taxation to Canadians, that have been unjustly and unfairly taxed on phantom income, the CRA records must be in dependable condition for at least the past decade.
Even with accurate tax records it would likely take thousands of man-hours to pull back all the details of tax returns where taxing of phantom income has been a factor.
These man-hours are not the problem as the Canadian government has been generating make-work projects for years -- just to keep the employment records high and full employment on-going. This would be an excellent opportunity to keep that ball rolling.
Government failure to initiate this form of corrective action seems to narrow the field down to the government being unable to fulfill their “fair Tax” policy in this area and only the political insiders know for certain the reason(s) why.
So if man-hours are not the reason, and unwillingness is not the reason then that narrows the field down considerably. What if the necessary data is not readily available or perhaps not available under any conditions?
That could explain why requests made for phantom tax data, under the freedom of information act, have been fudged and blacked-out such that the numbers were never revealed. Ostensibly: in keeping with the policy of protecting personal confidential information.
This excuse doesn’t jell. There is nothing personal about saying there are X thousands of Canadians taxed on money they never saw -- and to fairly compensate these victims will cost the Canadian treasury $X billions of dollars.
So we are left with the possibility that I may have unfairly maligning the Canadian Federal Politicians on the ASSUMPTION they just didn’t care about the abuse heaped upon our honest, hard-working, Canadians who have been taxed into financial ruin by an indifferent, greedy, bunch of ineffective elected representatives.
Perhaps instead the problem is not greed and callous disregard for injustice -- it is fear of revealing a much bigger problem. Could the problem be: “Loss of tax data” which equals loss of control.
If, in fact Mr. Flaherty, you would have fulfilled you’re “Canada’s Fair Tax Plan” if you had the means at your disposal to do so: then just say so.
At least your personal public image and the public image of your party will improve and you might be able to blame the bungled tax record situation on a previous government, and/or some hacker(s) that managed to delete and/or corrupted the CRA tax records.
Or perhaps like the “Air India” situation the necessary tax records have all been shredded.
Things like that do happen unfortunately.
In any event you could then hire a lot more summer students to research every challenge to the tax records that such an admission would invite. In the process the damaged/lost/missing tax files would at least be updated by each challenge resolved and the 2009 summer student employment figures would also be given a much needed boost.
Let me know if I owe you, or anyone in Canada’s House of Commons, an apology.
And taking your prior advice: I won’t hold my breath waiting for that information or for any action by our current government to correct Canada’s phantom income tax problem.
And if nothing is done to correct this outrageous tax policy by the arrival of the next federal election don’t hold your breath waiting for my support, or the support of anyone I can influence to vote.
See you at the next federal election polls O’Grady.
Victor Drummond ©
Perhaps I have misread the Canadian Government and Federal Party Leaders.
A commentary on the Canadian Governments Failure to correct
the grossly unfair policy of taxing phantom income.
By Victor Drummond ©
July 2009
From the beginning of the Federal Conservative Party 2005 Pre-election campaign the words: “Lower Taxes”, and “Canada’s Fairness Taxation Plan” have permeated nearly every public and private speech made by the Honourable James Flaherty, Canada’s Minister of Finance.
Taking him at his word was a big mistake. But Why?
He obviously does not really believe that levying huge “income” taxes on money that was never and probably never will be actual “income” is “fair”. He made that clear when he allowed the Tax Remission Order (TRO) initiated by the Hon Gary Lunn, CP, MP for the riding of Saanich Gulf-Islands to proceed to completion.
Then in spite of tentative commitments by the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister of Canada, who was quoted by a journalist of the Victoria Times Colonist, newspaper, as saying: “We’ll get it resolved” referring to the unfair exclusion of thousands of other victims of the same tax trap.
Instead, however, the Hon James Flaherty allowed senior bureaucrats in the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and in his own ministry to warn the government against proceeding to correct the problem by declaring the Gary Lunn TRO “set a dangerous precedent”.
Why the about face? At first glance I thought it was a question of political greed. But now that the economy has tanked, and the government is looking for ways to restore economic stability: even going so far as to accept a huge multi-billion dollar deficit budget forecast, the issue is no so clear.
If the government is willing to dish out billions of dollars to keep corporations alive, producing items for public consumption, why would they not also dish out “fair” and "justified" tax refunds to provide the Canadian victims, of phantom income taxation, with discretionary funds to purchase those otherwise surplus products?
The sense of this action being it would not only restore the governments credibility, and help boost the economy it would fulfill the governments commitment to provide reduced and truly fair taxation and last but not least it would restore Canada’s image on the world stage as a decent and just country governed by decent, considerate and compassionate leaders.
But not one Canadian federal party leader, or Member of the House of Commons has initiated a government, or members bill, to correct our defective “taxable benefit” legislation and fairly compensate those who have been victimized by it. Even though the United States Government has recently taken that kind of corrective action regarding their comparable defective “Alternative Minimum Tax” (AMT) legislation. Ref:- www.reformAMT.org
Now that is a mystery. There are tons of political hay to be gained for federal opposition parties by painting the current government into the corner they created via their “Canada’s Fair Tax Plan” and failure to deliver.
None of the opposition leaders or members has seized this opportunity. Why not?
This situation now raises the prospect the answer is not because they are unwilling to go this route to 24 Sussex Drive it is much more likely they all know something that no one is daring to say: They are all unable to deliver on this commitment for some obscure reason.
In order to deliver fair taxation to Canadians, that have been unjustly and unfairly taxed on phantom income, the CRA records must be in dependable condition for at least the past decade.
Even with accurate tax records it would likely take thousands of man-hours to pull back all the details of tax returns where taxing of phantom income has been a factor.
These man-hours are not the problem as the Canadian government has been generating make-work projects for years -- just to keep the employment records high and full employment on-going. This would be an excellent opportunity to keep that ball rolling.
Government failure to initiate this form of corrective action seems to narrow the field down to the government being unable to fulfill their “fair Tax” policy in this area and only the political insiders know for certain the reason(s) why.
So if man-hours are not the reason, and unwillingness is not the reason then that narrows the field down considerably. What if the necessary data is not readily available or perhaps not available under any conditions?
That could explain why requests made for phantom tax data, under the freedom of information act, have been fudged and blacked-out such that the numbers were never revealed. Ostensibly: in keeping with the policy of protecting personal confidential information.
This excuse doesn’t jell. There is nothing personal about saying there are X thousands of Canadians taxed on money they never saw -- and to fairly compensate these victims will cost the Canadian treasury $X billions of dollars.
So we are left with the possibility that I may have unfairly maligning the Canadian Federal Politicians on the ASSUMPTION they just didn’t care about the abuse heaped upon our honest, hard-working, Canadians who have been taxed into financial ruin by an indifferent, greedy, bunch of ineffective elected representatives.
Perhaps instead the problem is not greed and callous disregard for injustice -- it is fear of revealing a much bigger problem. Could the problem be: “Loss of tax data” which equals loss of control.
If, in fact Mr. Flaherty, you would have fulfilled you’re “Canada’s Fair Tax Plan” if you had the means at your disposal to do so: then just say so.
At least your personal public image and the public image of your party will improve and you might be able to blame the bungled tax record situation on a previous government, and/or some hacker(s) that managed to delete and/or corrupted the CRA tax records.
Or perhaps like the “Air India” situation the necessary tax records have all been shredded.
Things like that do happen unfortunately.
In any event you could then hire a lot more summer students to research every challenge to the tax records that such an admission would invite. In the process the damaged/lost/missing tax files would at least be updated by each challenge resolved and the 2009 summer student employment figures would also be given a much needed boost.
Let me know if I owe you, or anyone in Canada’s House of Commons, an apology.
And taking your prior advice: I won’t hold my breath waiting for that information or for any action by our current government to correct Canada’s phantom income tax problem.
And if nothing is done to correct this outrageous tax policy by the arrival of the next federal election don’t hold your breath waiting for my support, or the support of anyone I can influence to vote.
See you at the next federal election polls O’Grady.
Victor Drummond ©
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
GET THE GOVERNMENT YOU..
GET THE GOVERNMENT YOU DESERVE
Use your voice and your vote effectively.
A commentary by Victor Drummond (c)
July 2009
The latest poll taken of federal political parties implies the Stephen Harper Conservative party has taken a slight lead over the Federal Liberal Party led by Michael Ignatieff.
One commentator went so far as to say now that Michael has been exposed to public scrutiny the public's love affair with Michael is over and since he was not a democratically elected leader of the party he is not necessarily the person most Liberals would have chosen.
My own hopes for a new deal for Canadians, under Michael’s leadership have been dashed due to his reluctance to speak out on the issue of taxing honest, hard-working Canadians on fictitious, (phantom) income.
Many Canadians caught in that tax trap have endured as much negative impact as those Canadians now suffering the effects of the world economic recession BUT not one Canadian Political leader has cared, or dared, say anything about it. Now, however, when a significant number of votes are at stake, they are all quite concerned and outspoken about the distress caused by major corporations going out of business and the current massive loss of jobs.
Wake up everyone. This problem didn’t just happen. There are many Canadians who were taxed out of their homes and/or life’s savings and who lost their employment beginning with the Hi-Tech market crash in the year 2000.
Instead of rushing to their aid and correcting the defective legislation that gave rise to the problem the Liberal Government, of the day, merely allowed the victims to defer payment of the unfair taxes levied for as long as the proper conditions were in effect. This only delayed the payment of the unjust taxes and left a cloud of worry and anxiety over the heads of those victimized.
Although the Federal Conservative Party campaigned, in 2005, on promises of: "lower taxation, more government accountability, a Canadian Fair Tax Plan," etc. and their slogan “STAND UP FOR CANADA” once they were in power “THEY SAT DOWN ON MOST VICTIMZED CANADIANS”.
Perhaps the Tax Remission Order (TRO) that was implemented by the Harper Government in 2006 was intended to be the first step in providing “Fair Taxation” for all similar victims, (of the same tax trap), but so far it has turned out to be the only, and last step, in that direction.
In fact following the recent CBC, B.C. “Speak Out” broadcast of the Shannon MacLeod interview, on the subject of taxing phantom income the Hon. James Flaherty, Canada’s Minister of Finance was quoted as saying: “ Those who are waiting for the tax policy to be changed – needn’t hold their breath.” (or words to that effect.)
It is very apparent the Harper government has no intention of following the example set by the United States Government, when the U.S. Government acted to put an end to taxing “phantom income” and also fairly compensating those that had been victimized by it. Ref:- www.reformAMT.org
Just give this matter a bit of thought. Our past, “Liberal Government”, and our present “Conservative Government” have, and still are, applying a tax policy whereby “REAL” Income Taxes are levied on purely “fictitious income”. In many instances the tax levied is by itself several times greater than the victims gross income for the same year.
Does anyone really believe that ordinary Canadians should be levied any tax what-so-ever on purely “potential” phantom income under any excuse?
Does anyone actually believe it is fair, under any circumstances to levy taxes, on ordinary, honest, hard-working Canadians, that force the victim to sell, or re-mortgage their home, and/or deplete a lifetime of savings and/or borrow money to pay such a tax?
Does anyone believe the recourse open to object to such an outrageous tax levy is to appeal, individually, to the Canada Revenue Agency(CRA) local chief of Appeals Official who may, or more likely may not, grant tax relief -- to be a fair system of taxation?
Does anyone believe that bulk cancellation of such taxes, and related penalties, for a mere 37 victims, by way of a “Tax Remission Order” (TRO) -- while denying the same treatment to thousands of other victims of the same tax trap – is “fair”?
Does anyone believe they are protected from such abuse by their government because they have written, stated, rights in both the: “Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms” and the updated “Taxpayers Bill of Rights” that will automatically kick-in to protect them? If so you are in for a real shock.
There is no agency performing the function of watchdog over those rights – which the CRA violates at will with impunity.
Those rights are reserved for Canadians who are well connected and/or financially prepared to fight their way through the court system. Usually with the result of throwing good money after bad.
Are you content to allow this travesty of justice, and gross unfairness to continue in your Canada?
If so – then go merrily on your way – what happens to other victimized, honest, hard-working neighbours isn’t your concern. And you will likely get the government you deserve.
If you do not want your government to continue to victimize you and/or your neighbours or you merely want Canada’s world image of being a decent, and fair place to live, and to do business, to be an honest appraisal, then let your voice be heard.
Contact the group: “Canadians for Fair and Equitable Taxation” (CFET), at: www.cfet.ca
Sign the petition you will find there. Contact your riding's Member of Parliament (MP) and inform him, or her, you want Canada’s taxable benefit legislation amended to put an end to taxing Canadians on money they never saw, “phantom income”.
The address of all members of Canada’s 40th parliament can be found at: http://www.yayacanada.com/MPs.html
As a famous person once said: “Everything is possible if we all speak with one voice.”
Speak out and let your voice be heard and make your vote in the next federal elction really count for something.
See you at the voting polls in the bext federal election O’Grady.
Victor Drummond ©
Use your voice and your vote effectively.
A commentary by Victor Drummond (c)
July 2009
The latest poll taken of federal political parties implies the Stephen Harper Conservative party has taken a slight lead over the Federal Liberal Party led by Michael Ignatieff.
One commentator went so far as to say now that Michael has been exposed to public scrutiny the public's love affair with Michael is over and since he was not a democratically elected leader of the party he is not necessarily the person most Liberals would have chosen.
My own hopes for a new deal for Canadians, under Michael’s leadership have been dashed due to his reluctance to speak out on the issue of taxing honest, hard-working Canadians on fictitious, (phantom) income.
Many Canadians caught in that tax trap have endured as much negative impact as those Canadians now suffering the effects of the world economic recession BUT not one Canadian Political leader has cared, or dared, say anything about it. Now, however, when a significant number of votes are at stake, they are all quite concerned and outspoken about the distress caused by major corporations going out of business and the current massive loss of jobs.
Wake up everyone. This problem didn’t just happen. There are many Canadians who were taxed out of their homes and/or life’s savings and who lost their employment beginning with the Hi-Tech market crash in the year 2000.
Instead of rushing to their aid and correcting the defective legislation that gave rise to the problem the Liberal Government, of the day, merely allowed the victims to defer payment of the unfair taxes levied for as long as the proper conditions were in effect. This only delayed the payment of the unjust taxes and left a cloud of worry and anxiety over the heads of those victimized.
Although the Federal Conservative Party campaigned, in 2005, on promises of: "lower taxation, more government accountability, a Canadian Fair Tax Plan," etc. and their slogan “STAND UP FOR CANADA” once they were in power “THEY SAT DOWN ON MOST VICTIMZED CANADIANS”.
Perhaps the Tax Remission Order (TRO) that was implemented by the Harper Government in 2006 was intended to be the first step in providing “Fair Taxation” for all similar victims, (of the same tax trap), but so far it has turned out to be the only, and last step, in that direction.
In fact following the recent CBC, B.C. “Speak Out” broadcast of the Shannon MacLeod interview, on the subject of taxing phantom income the Hon. James Flaherty, Canada’s Minister of Finance was quoted as saying: “ Those who are waiting for the tax policy to be changed – needn’t hold their breath.” (or words to that effect.)
It is very apparent the Harper government has no intention of following the example set by the United States Government, when the U.S. Government acted to put an end to taxing “phantom income” and also fairly compensating those that had been victimized by it. Ref:- www.reformAMT.org
Just give this matter a bit of thought. Our past, “Liberal Government”, and our present “Conservative Government” have, and still are, applying a tax policy whereby “REAL” Income Taxes are levied on purely “fictitious income”. In many instances the tax levied is by itself several times greater than the victims gross income for the same year.
Does anyone really believe that ordinary Canadians should be levied any tax what-so-ever on purely “potential” phantom income under any excuse?
Does anyone actually believe it is fair, under any circumstances to levy taxes, on ordinary, honest, hard-working Canadians, that force the victim to sell, or re-mortgage their home, and/or deplete a lifetime of savings and/or borrow money to pay such a tax?
Does anyone believe the recourse open to object to such an outrageous tax levy is to appeal, individually, to the Canada Revenue Agency(CRA) local chief of Appeals Official who may, or more likely may not, grant tax relief -- to be a fair system of taxation?
Does anyone believe that bulk cancellation of such taxes, and related penalties, for a mere 37 victims, by way of a “Tax Remission Order” (TRO) -- while denying the same treatment to thousands of other victims of the same tax trap – is “fair”?
Does anyone believe they are protected from such abuse by their government because they have written, stated, rights in both the: “Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms” and the updated “Taxpayers Bill of Rights” that will automatically kick-in to protect them? If so you are in for a real shock.
There is no agency performing the function of watchdog over those rights – which the CRA violates at will with impunity.
Those rights are reserved for Canadians who are well connected and/or financially prepared to fight their way through the court system. Usually with the result of throwing good money after bad.
Are you content to allow this travesty of justice, and gross unfairness to continue in your Canada?
If so – then go merrily on your way – what happens to other victimized, honest, hard-working neighbours isn’t your concern. And you will likely get the government you deserve.
If you do not want your government to continue to victimize you and/or your neighbours or you merely want Canada’s world image of being a decent, and fair place to live, and to do business, to be an honest appraisal, then let your voice be heard.
Contact the group: “Canadians for Fair and Equitable Taxation” (CFET), at: www.cfet.ca
Sign the petition you will find there. Contact your riding's Member of Parliament (MP) and inform him, or her, you want Canada’s taxable benefit legislation amended to put an end to taxing Canadians on money they never saw, “phantom income”.
The address of all members of Canada’s 40th parliament can be found at: http://www.yayacanada.com/MPs.html
As a famous person once said: “Everything is possible if we all speak with one voice.”
Speak out and let your voice be heard and make your vote in the next federal elction really count for something.
See you at the voting polls in the bext federal election O’Grady.
Victor Drummond ©
Sunday, July 5, 2009
WHAT WOULD IT TAKE FOR YOU TO BE...SOLD OUT?
THE GREAT CANADIAN SELL—OUT
A commentary on what it takes for Canada’s Government
to forsake you in a pile of debt that they dumped you in.
By Victor Drummond ©
July 1rst 2009
For probably as long as the past 20 years the Canadian Government has enjoyed the financial returns produced by their defective taxable benefits legislation. And during the first 10 years, 1989 to 1999 all was well.
Honest, hard-working Canadians -- fortunate enough to be wooed by their Hi-Tech employers, and invited to share in the employer corporation’s phenomenal growth via participation in an Employee Shares Purchase Plan (ESPP) or an Employees Shares Option (ESO) agreement – had reason to consider themselves to be living under the worlds greatest system of government.
They may have wondered about the reason for taxing their ESPP/ESO equities as of any profit they might realize by selling their purchased equities on the day they were delivered – BUT What-the-heck: all they had to do was sell enough of the shares to cover the tax and hold the rest, for even more gains, or sell them all and pocket the difference.
Although there were, tax ramification, caution notes included in some employers’ ESPP/ESO information notes few, if any participents, ever dreamed of being taxed on gains that remained purely potential: i.e. phantom income: or in tax amounts that often exceeded their gross income for the entire year.
Yet that is precisely what happened when the Hi-Tech market went bust in 2000, and is still happening, to thousands of shocked Canadian taxpayers.
Initially many victims of this insidious tax trap thought the government had made an error and it would be rectified promptly as soon the victim(s) reported the event to the taxman. After all this was Canada not some destitute third world country controlled by some despotic dictator.
And it seemed the government was about to correct this tax rip-off when the government of the time first announced the victims could defer payment of the taxes on phantom income, until the equities were sold or disposed of, by utilizing the features provided per the newly minted form T1212.
The victims were initially under the impression this allowed them to defer payment of taxes on the ESPP/ESO equities until the time of sale and they would only be taxed on the actual gain, (if any) realized at that time.
OH No screamed the tax-man! No matter what profit or loss you have at the time you actually sell those ESPP/ESO equities you still pay the taxes levied on the gain you could have made on the date the equities were delivery to you, (exercise date). If by chance you managed to sell your ESPP/ESO equities later at an even greater profit then you will owe even more tax money by reason of your making an additional “Capital Gain”.
But, If you happen to sell those same equities at a loss – well that’s too bad. You can not apply the loss on those same equities against the taxable benefit taxes previously levied on them.
If you win we all win BUT if you lose we still win. What could be “fairer” than that?
More to the point what could be more unfair than that? Read on and you will find out.
So beginning with the tax year 2000 thousands of Canadian taxpayers found themselves financially ruined due to horrendous taxes levied on money they never saw.
Many sent letters of appeal to every Canadian government official from the Prime Minister all the way down to the farthest back, back-bencher Member of Parliament (MP), to no avail.
Many such appeals were totally ignored and those that did rate a reply were advised the problem was not within the jurisdiction of the recipient Minister but their letter was being forwarded to some other department for consideration, which would be more accurately stated as inconsideration because nothing was ever done to correct the problem.
(For more detail of government response during this period, in time, review the prior posted series:- “Appeals to Reason part 1 to part 17. (This series is currently on hold: pending the result of a motion during FINA meeting No 33. to consider the impact of correcting the problem.”
By the time the federal election of 2005 was pending the shenanigans of the long term Federal Liberal Government were becoming a bit too much for the average, long suffering, Canadian voter to tolerate.
The Federal Conservative Party were making promises, such as providing Canadians with lower taxes, fairer taxation and more accountable government.
This sounded good to most Canadians and so the Conservative party – true to their word – when they formed the next government produced a Tax Remission Order (TRO) that did actually revoke the taxes and related penalties for all of 37 former employees of the defunct SDL Optics Inc. (JDSU) corporation in the Conservative riding of Saanich Gulf-Islands in British Columbia.
The TRO event was announced with great fanfare: by MP, Gary Lunn in the riding, along with the new Prime Minister the Right Hon Stephen Harper. When questioned by a reporter, from the Victoria Times Colonist Newspaper, about the scope of the TRO the Prime Minister replied “We’ll resolve it” and you added: “it will take a change of code” to correct the problem.
A change of “code”? What code? Were you referring to the government code of “ethics” or the flawed taxable benefit legislation?
You must have been thinking of the government code of ethics because the exclusive nature of the TRO merely made a bad situation worse for those who were also taxed into financial ruin but were excluded from the tax relief granted to a mere 37 victims.
Two years have gone by since you made that remark and so far nothing more has been “resolved” in regard to the unfair taxation of phantom income..
Now our esteemed Minister of Finance, the Hon. James Flaherty, is telling us the victims of taxation on phantom income are all treated the same and the tax system, as presently operated, is “FAIR”.
Do those government persons who initiated, and authorized, the Saanich Gulf-Islands TRO agree with you? I hardly think so.
If they truly believed the existing system was “fair” they would have merely advised those 37 former SDL Optics Inc. employees to follow the same appeal system as was, and still is, available to all other similar victims.
But they knew the system was corrupt and grossly unfair so the Saanich Gulf-Islands TRO was produced.
What happened then? Why were the remaining thousands of Canadians, who are caught in the same outrageous tax trap, left in various states of financial devastation by the very government that had campaigned on the promise of “reduced” and “fair” taxation for all Canadians?
According to the article “JDS deal dangerous precedent. Ottawa told” which appeared in the Victoria B.C. newspaper “The Times Colonist” on December 7, 2007, “Senior bureaucrats warned such a decision was unfair to other taxpayers and set a dangerous precedent….” “A similar warning came from Canada Revenue Agency Commissioner William Baker.” “In a memo to National Revenue Minister Gordon O’Connor, he warned that waiving taxes in this case was inconsistent with the laws and policies applied to all other Canadians.”
So what are those “Senior Canadian Bureaucrats really saying? It is obvious they recognize something about the policy of taxing honest, hard-working Canadians, on money they never saw, (phantom income), is definitely “NOT FAIR.”
The wording of the warning they gave Canadian government authorities reveals that they believe denying all such tax victims truly fair tax treatment is preferable to providing the same truly fair tax treatment for all such victims.
So it appears in real terms, on the scale of “fairness”, it is more unfair to give only some victims a “fair tax deal” than it is to apply the same unfair tax policy to every such victim.
In their own words they stated: providing “fair” tax treatment to any victims of an outrageously unfair tax policy is “setting a dangerous precedent”
Why would any “DECENT” Canadian prefer to: (a) maintain an obviously unfair tax policy which was, and still is, causing financial devastation upon thousands of honest, hard-working Canadians, and their family as compared to: (b) correcting the defective legislation and treating all victims to truly fair taxation?
The answer being: that anyone who denies, tolerates, and ignores the harm being done, to Canadian citizens, by this insidious, indecent, unfair, tax policy is obviously not a “DECENT” Canadian.
Our very own government authorities, from our Right Honourable Prime Minister on down to our loyal opposition leaders, have sold us out for the modern equivalent of those notorious 30 pieces of silver.
How much money is really involved in this sell-out? Even if anyone knows, no one is saying.
But does it really matter? What difference does it make if we are being sold out for mere millions or many billions of dollars? The fact remains – the integrity, honour and decency of our government, its officials and Canada’s world image – has a price tag.
Is there anything you or I can do about this atrocity?
Yes there is! You can contact the group: “Canadians for Fair and Equitable Taxation” (CFET) at their web page: www.cfet.ca
You can sign their petition and post a comment that expresses your support for the CFET objective of Fair and Equitable Taxation for all Canadians – not just a favoured few.
You can join the CFET group to give them more members and a bigger voice in dealing with the Canadian government. There are no membership fees, or dues of any kind.
You can follow the advice of the CFET Director of Communications and send your Member of Parliament (MP) letters (postage free) and/or e-mails informing your MP that you demand they support the CFET objective of “fair taxation” for all phantom income tax victims.
And you want action by the Canadian government equivalent to that taken by the U.S. government when they put an end to taxing Americans on phantom income. See www.reformAMT.org
If we all do our part our government will eventually do theirs, or, they won’t be our government.
Do not waste your vote power – it is very valuable – so get something of value in exchange – not just a bagful of useless political rhetoric.
See you at the Voting polls for the coming federal election O’Grady.
(Who is O’Grady? – if you don’t know -- read “What O’Grady Sez” posted 23 Jan 08 in this series of blog postings)
Victor Drummond ©
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
HOW BEAUTIFUL CANADA..
HOW BEAUTIFUL CANADA COULD BE
A LAND OF THE PURE AND THE FREE
A tribute to my country on Canada Day 2009
With a take-off from the Song “How Beautiful Heaven Must Be”
By Victor Drummond ©
July 1rst 2009
Perhaps it was only in my head: a false impression from the start, but until I realized my son had been taxed on phantom income – money he never saw – to the point where he had to remortgage his home – to pay this legalized extortion -- I believed Canada was the equivalent of the promised land.
As a naïve teen-ager I joined the Canadian Army, prepared to follow my older brother already in the thick of battle, in the defence of this Country. Had anyone attempted to tell me then that one day I would need to plead with my own government to obtain, fair taxation and/or justice I would have called them a Nazi fifth columnist.
Yet today after two years of asking, cajoling, and pleading with my elected representatives, in the Federal Government, to cease using their power to legally levy ruinous, unjustified, taxes on honest, hard-working Canadians I would have to admit, with an apology, the Nazi fifth columnist would have been right.
Those in power that recognized the unfairness and injustice sufficiently as to create a “Tax Remission Order” (TRO), to provide some measure of “fair taxation” to a mere 37 former employees of the SDL Optics/JDSU Corporation, then deny the same treatment to thousands of similar victims – have in the process made an outrageous tax situation even worse.
The only recourse left open to similar victims excluded from the benefits of the TRO are: (1) to appeal individually to a Revenue Canada “Chief of Appeals Officer” who may, or may not, grant the victim a favourable decision, or (2) Individually apply to the “Tax Court of Canada” for a favourable decision,
which is a crap shoot at the best of times and without the hiring of a good tax lawyer is not very likely to produce a favourable decision, or (3) Apply individually, or as a Class-Action group, to have the case tried by the Supreme Court of Canada. Again a tax lawyer improves the prospects of obtaining a favourable ruling but more often than not such action results in sending good money after bad.
Revenue Canada Web pages declare these avenues equate to “Fair” treatment of the victimized taxpayers -- it is nothing more than an attempt to palm off a one-at-a-time appeal process – which is inherently unfair – as a reasonably “fair” system. (Which it is not)
Although our Minister of Finance, our Minister of Justice, and our Prime Minister are all perfectly aware of the injustice, unfairness and outrageous aspects of extorting money from honest, hard-working Canadians on the excuse they could have taken a gain – but missed the opportunity –
not one of these minions of Decency, Honesty and “Fairness” dares to even address the problem let alone take action to correct it.
So how would you feel like celebrating Canada’s 142nd Dominion Day/Canada Day event if you were now living in a mortgage house that should have been mortgage free years ago?
Or you were still paying back money borrowed to pay taxes levied on income money you never saw?
Or your children are now deprived of a higher education because your savings have been used up paying tax on phantom income?
Or you spend many sleepless nights, in a state of anxiety, for fear taxes you have deferred will become payable due to circumstances beyond your control?
We could all raise our glass of aqua-pura and say to our government: “Here’s mud in your eye.” and mean it literally.
Canada could be the Beautiful Country our politicians tell us that it is – if they only had the moxie to put an end to taxing honest, hard-working Canadians into financial disaster -- on the excuse they had momentarily an opportunity to take a profit.
Where no real gain has been realized, in tangible, exchangeable form, then there is no justification for demanding a percentage of that imaginary money in the form of hard cash.
Until our elected federal representatives find the decency, the will, and the courage to take action to fix this problem I will raise my glass on Canada Day and salute:- “Here’s Mud in your eye.” and reflect on the Beautiful Place Canada Should, and, Could Be – but isn’t.
The Americans found a way to “fix” their defective phantom tax legislation and compensate those victimized by it – so are American politicians more honest, more decent, more capable that ours?
It certainly looks that way -- and that is no compliment to our federal politicians.
Ref:- www.freformAMT.org and www.cfet.ca to compare the U.S. and Canadian corrective action to date.
Victor Drummond ©
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