FROM TWO-O-ONE TO..

FROM TWO-O-ONE TO THREE HUNDRED

Canadians who have been legally robbed and financially devastated due to “Income” Taxes levied on nonexistent, (phantom), income,have been submitting comments to the “Canadians for Fair and Equitable Taxation”,
(CFET), Petition for the Canadian Government.

The Third one hundred submissions are presented here with comments
By Victor Drummond ©
January 2010

Below are the opening lines of the CFET petition.

To the Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, Minister of Revenue, Members of parliament of all parties We, the undersigned, are shocked to learn that the government is taxing people on paper income they never in reality made, a.k.a. phantom income.

(Note: Victor Drummond, definition of “phantom income”.
Phantom income is income that “might” have happened but did not happen but has been taxed as though it did happen. Unfairness personified.)

Visit: www.cfet.ca to read the full text.
=============================================

The third 100 entries on the Petition Sign-on page -- with space for comment -- are as follows:

Of the 100 individual entries only 28 posted a comment.
Not one comment, however, said anything good about the taxing of phantom income.

Of the 100 individual entries 29 preferred to sign in as “Anonymous”
Why?

The best explanation for some people to remain anonymous, when signing the CFET petition, was contained in an e-mail that arrived at the CFET via the web page -- inquiry@ link -- last March.

The authors of the letter explained why they supported CFET but are reluctant to actually join the group, as follows: “I wished to remain anonymous. I suspect cra folk read these and remember.”

That is our Canada – a place where many honest, hard-working, victimized taxpayers, and their supporters, are afraid to be identified with their honest opinion for fear of being persecuted.

Do you suppose there is any justification for this concern? It has never happened to me, yet.

Ask someone who lost their home, and/or life savings, to the taxman, what they think about possible reprisals for telling it the way they see it.

What a sad state of affairs for honest, hard-working, Canadians to find themselves living with.

Especially when the Canadian Government has produced a document titled:
“Serving Canadians – Canada’s System of Justice”
Ref: www.justice.gc.ca/eng/dept-min/pub/just/img/courten.pdf

Telling Canadians how Canadian laws are designed to assure equality and fairness.


The Third one hundred CFET Petition Entries
============================================
(201) Anonymous No comment
(202) S. H. No comment
(203) S. H. No comment
(204) Anonymous “This needs to be changed”
(205) M. N. No comment
(206) L. L. H No comment
(207) D. C. No comment

(208) O. L. “Concur wholeheartedly. Tax should be paid on cash, or realized gains not on paper gains which may never be realized, or materialize.”

(209) Anonymous No comment

(210) W. T. M. “When employed at JDS in Ottawa this affected many of the staff but particularly the lower salaried and less financially savvy technical support workers. These people are also the ones who are least able to cope with paying off the large tax bills.”

(211) Anonymous No comment
(212) G. N. No comment
(213) Anonymous No comment
(214) Anonymous No comment
(215) K. T. No comment
(216) H. W. No comment
(217) L. M. No comment
(218) Anonymous No comment
(219) Anonymous No comment
(220) Anonymous No comment

(221) Anonymous “I agree”

(222) G. B. No comment
(223) M. V. No comment
(224) K. N. No comment
(225) J. D. Z. No comment
(226) Anonymous No comment

(227) Anonymous “Absolutely unfair – paid taxes on stock purchase program for Nortel that are 700% under water.”

(228) N. S. No comment

(229) B. H. “This is an easy fix. The employees at SDL Optics have set the example.”

(230) J. R. M. No comment

(231) C. C. “I fully support this petition. The last I, as a Canadian taxpayer want to see is to tax people unfairly. Please fix the law.”

(232) L. B. No comment

(233) Anonymous “I was in the U.S. at the time, already retired from Nortel after 25 years of work and exercised some stock options with advice to retain them.” “On that basis I found out later that I had to pay about $165,000 in taxes on paper shares that I still have at a value less than $2,800.00.” “This is highly unfair and unequitable as I had to lose all my savings and some of my RRSP in order to cover the tax on fictitious gains.” “Only real gains (on actual sale of shares) should be taxable, not immaterial variations in price.”

(234) M. M. No comment
(235) L. No comment
(236) A. B. No comment
(237) T. C. No comment


(238) G. D. “This law is irrational and typical of the bully pulpit enjoyed by REVCAN.” “Please fix it.”

(239) Anonymous “I fought my income tax bill for two years and then gave up in despair.” “Had to declare bankruptcy.” “I never defaulted on a payment in my life but now my credit rating is mud.” “Even more infuriating considering the relief the CRA provided the JDS Uniphase employees:
http://www.gowlings.com/resources/enewsletters/taxationlaw/Htmfiles/V1N97_20070208.en.html

(240) Anonymous “It is time to address this.”

(241) M. J. K. No comment
(242) Anonymous No comment
(243) D. T. No comment
(244) C. J. No comment
(245) D. F. No comment
(246) D. G. No comment
(247) R. K. No comment

(248) M. Y. “It makes no sense to charge tax until a gain is realized.” “This is why we have capital gains taxes.” “Unrealized employee benefits should not be taxed or assessed until realized.” “If we treated capital gains this way it would kill investment in Canada due to burden of servicing the tax burden.”

(249) C. M. No comment
(250) D. C. No comment
(251) M. S. No comment
(252) C. G. No comment
(253) T. F. No comment

(254) R. M. “I have been taxed on a huge $ amount of employment benefit that was never realized.” “How can some people have this flaw corrected for them yet not all Canadians in the same situation can say this.”

(255) J. M. No comment
(256) W. T. No comment

(257) Anonymous “Best situation would be to allow capital loss on the shares to offset the paper employment benefit.” “Tax us on the money we actually receive.”

(258) C. M. “Faced with having to fill out the exact same ESO-tax deferral as part of my income tax return for the rest of my life I am happy to support any effort to get this loop-hole closed.”

(259) M. C. No comment
(260) S. H. No comment

(261) C. M. “My taxable stock option benefit is zero because the stock price went deep South.” “So mathematically 0 taxable benefit earned X 17% tax rate = 0 tax.”

(262) J. S. No comment
(263) Anonymous No comment

(264) D. M. “I wish us all luck on this one, but doubt that the government would ever rescind such an easy cash grab.” “Still if anyone was going to do it I suppose it is this current administration.”

(265) C. C. No comment
(266) A. L. No comment
(267) R. H. No comment

(268) Anonymous “I actually left my company 8 years ago to pursue other opportunities, and was a bit shocked this year when my accountant informed me that the shares I thought were an asset are actually a large liability due to the deferred stock option liability.” “ So, the shares sit there, without the possibility of ever being sold by me.” “ Why sell and trigger a tax liability when I can just put them under my bed and not ever trigger the liability.”

(269) D. R. No comment
(270) D. M. No comment
(271) Anonymous No comment

(272) B. M. “This not only requires action but the right kind of action. It requires thoughtful deliberation by people who are deliberately being fair, to end this mean and needless taxation.”

(273) K. M. No comment
(274) Anonymous No comment
(275) Anonymous No comment

(276) Anonymous “It is unfortunate that the Government of Canada continues to insist on benefiting from the Technology Boom when investors and employees have all lost or erased their gains.” “Many of the signatories on this petition continue to
provide significant tax revenues from income to Federal and Provincial governments, it is unjust to tax on income never realized and never realizable.” “Allowing offset of income gain with stock option losses would be fair and just.”

(277) Anonymous “Allowing those affected to offset the unrealized deferred income gain with the corresponding capital loss would seem to be a reasonable solution.”

(278) Y-T. L. No comment
(279) B. S. No comment
(280) K. T. No comment
(281) Anonymous No comment
(282) P. H. No comment
(283) Anonymous No comment

(284) P. J. “This cost me a significant amount of money that I never even saw.”

(285) C. C. No comment
(286) K. H. No comment
(287) J. M. No comment
(288) J. D. P. No comment
(289) A. No comment

(290) M. L. “I was impacted with an $80,000 tax bill which to pay I sold my house (at a loss) and cashed in much of my RRSP. I could have not sold stock and held off paying taxes - but that would have left the burden to my family in event of my death – so the decision was to bite it.... Tax was on options that cost me $0.20 for startup company which I exercises when over $60.00 USD. I exercised instead of losing stock as I had resigned my position at said company and would lose stock if not exercised. Problem is...I was in a lockout period - I could not sell stock for another almost 2 months. The first day I could sell stock, the telecommunications sector crashed and the stock was trading at sub $8.00 USD.”

(291) M. J. “In the name of justice!!!”

(292) Anonymous “How can they tax you on money you never even had They can and they do.... I petition for this to change as well.”

(293) Anonymous No comment

(294) R. T. G. “I was employed at Creo products from 1995-1999 and was effected by the tax system for employee stock options.”

(295) R. T. G. “The whole affair, involving people being taxed based on money that they never in fact received, is utterly stupid. Quite apart from the unfairness towards the people affected - involving, in some cases, people's lives being ruined - the tax laws involved clearly did not anticipate situations of the kind that have arisen.“

“Refusal by the authorities to change what is obviously defective/dysfunctional
legislation is just plain un-professional, quite apart from anything else.”

“To pretend that the law cannot be changed is simply a case of pretending that the AXIOM represented by the law is a REASON for not correcting the problem.

"It's like saying "...there's so much of it going on that you can't possibly do
anything about it...", or some such - a common form of muddled and incompetent "reasoning" frequently used for the purpose of obfuscation and fobbing people off.

In a May 2002 speech, Prime Minister Stephen Harper (as Leader of the Official Opposition, at that time) said that Canada was a "...nation of defeatists..." I have this documented. This should be brought to the attention of the Prime Minister. This problem is being caused by lawyers and bureaucrats trying to "look tough" in front of their peers or superiors, by being dictatorial and peremptory, over things they maintain "...can't be done..." , far beyond the point of merely being absurd.

Unsatisfactory; the people responsible should all be removed from their jobs without delay. It is not acceptable that a bunch of stupid lawyers and bureaucrats should be allowed to propagate the type of defeatism and defeatist attitudes that the Prime Minister himself disapproves of.

(296) D. W. No comment
(297) K. J. No comment
(298) F. No comment
(299) M. J. No comment

(300) Anonymous “You should not be taxed on any equity until there is a formal transaction of selling the equity. Then if you end up selling at a loss you should be able to claim a capitol loss as well.

===========================================
In the above listing only the initials of the CFET petition signers have been given.

If you found the above posted comments interesting you should visit the “Canadians for Fair and Equitable Taxation” web pages and follow the “Sign our Petition” and “Signatures” links to get an advanced reading of a planned future Victor Drummond blog titled: “FROM THREE-O-ONE TO FOUR HUNDRED”.

While catching up on this topic sign the CFET petition, and post a comment, to add incentive for the Canadian Government to take corrective action.

Also planned for future Victor Drummond postings, to this blog, are a series of letters, e-mails and snail mails to various Ministers and MP’s in Canada’s Governments, past and present, and the really intelligent replies those appellants, lucky enough to get a reply, received in response.

Names and dates of the letters to be posted may be altered, or omitted, to protect the identity of the VICTIMS.

If you would like to support the CFET mission to achieve the “fair taxation for all Canadians” promised by our conservative government in their pre-election brochure: “STAND UP FOR CANADA then contact you’re Member of Parliament and say so.

The contact information for members of Canada’s 40th Parliament may be found by following the web links posted at the end of this article.

Our current government has no excuse, or justification for continuing to extort after-tax money from Canadian Taxpayers on the basis of defective taxable benefit legislation and an unjustified taxable benefit rationale.

The U.S.A. government has already acknowledged such a tax policy is unfair and have amended their equivalent tax legislation to put an end to taxing U.S. citizens on “phantom income.”
Ref: www.fair-iso.org and www.reformAMT.org

Canadian Government document: “Serving Canadians – Canada’s System of Justice” misinforms Canadians that Canada’s Laws and Justice System are intended to provide “fair” and “equitable treatment” for all Canadians. (Yah Right). The intent of this document is being violated by the CRA regularly with impunity.

Canadians have been taxed on “money never seen” for about a decade now and assumed guilty of some undefined crime – punishable by horrendous tax levies -- when they failed to sell their ESPP/ESO equities at the time of exercise. And some 37 such victims have been granted tax relief via an exclusive Tax Remission Order (TRO) while the remaining thousands of similar victims are still excluded.

Our Right Honourable Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has been quoted in the Victoria Times Colonist Newspaper as committing to “resolve” the phantom tax issue – two years ago – and the victims are still waiting.

Do not tell me Canada’s laws are designed to provide equality and fairness while imposing real taxes on imaginary income – show me.

Correct the unfair taxable benefit legislation and fairly compensate those victimized by it. The U.S. government has made this correction and Canada has no excuse for denying our tax victims the same “fair” treatment.

Canadian voters are the last resort to achieving the “fair taxation for all Canadians” promised by this government but not yet delivered.

Contact every MP in your riding – opposition MP’s included – and inform them that in exchange for your vote you want their support to correct Canada’s defective taxable benefit legislation -- to put an end to taxing Canadians on “phantom income” and those already victimized by this outrageous tax practice to be fairly compensated in a way similar to the action already taken by the United States Government.

M.P. contact information is listed on the web page at:
http://webinfo.parl.gc.ca/MembersOfParliament/MainMPsCompleteList.aspx?TimePeriod=Current&Language=E

See you at the next federal election polls O’Grady.

Victor Drummond ©