Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Gold/Mining/Energy : Uranium Stocks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: russet who wrote (3981)	11/12/2006 6:40:03 AM
From: Condor	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 30195

Now Flaherty clamps down on offshore tax havens Eric Beauchesne, CanWest News Service; with files from Jacqueline Thorpe, Financial Post Published: Friday, November 10, 2006 OTTAWA - The federal government, having just shut down one costly tax-avoidance scheme with income trusts, has another in its sights -- offshore tax havens. "There's some significant tax avoidance there," Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said yesterday, after telling the Commons finance committee the government was reviewing the use of offshore tax havens to avoid paying tax. Using offshore tax havens to avoid paying tax is not illegal but is costly to the government, he said. Last year, Statistics Canada revealed Canadian direct investment in offshore financial centres, including "tax havens," had soared eightfold since 1990 to $88-billion in 2003. "Canadian enterprises invested substantial and growing amounts in countries known as 'Offshore Financial Centres', many of them in the Caribbean," it said. "These centres include countries that are often referred to as 'tax havens', as well as those which have important financial sectors, such as Switzerland, but also Ireland," it said. The largest increases went into Barbados, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas and Ireland, the five countries being among the 11 nations with the most Canadian assets. Auditor General Sheila Fraser has charged that multinational companies operating in Canada have avoided "hundreds of millions" of dollars in taxes over the past decade through the use of tax havens. Mr. Flaherty later introduced a motion in the Commons to amend the Income Tax Act to prevent "non-resident trusts and foreign investment entities" from using offshore tax havens to avoid tax. "The motion will amend existing income tax rules to help ensure that income earned by Canadians through foreign jurisdictions, including tax havens, is subject to tax as if it had been earned in Canada," he said in introducing the motion. The amendments mainly deal with the taxation of income earned through the use of non-resident trusts and foreign investment entities, the department said. They carry through on long-standing proposals that were announced in the 1999 budget but whose implementation has been delayed by repeated proposals for changes. Mr. Flaherty continued to defend his decision to break an election promise not to tax income trusts, saying they were being used as a tax-avoidance scheme by some corporations. The loss in revenues resulting from the escalating number and size of corporations that were converting into trusts would have eventually pushed the federal government back into a deficit, he told the committee. "The alternative would have been to impose a heavier tax burden on individual Canadians and their families, and that's not fair and we did not want to go there," he told reporters later. Liberal finance critic John McCallum argued the government could have given investors a 10-year grace period before imposing the tax, as the Americans did when they shut that tax loophole, rather than the four it did. "You would have the same long-run consequences, but you would have very substantially reduced the meltdown which all sorts of Canadians who invested in good faith suffered," Mr. McCallum said. canada.com

To: russet who wrote (3981)	11/12/2006 9:32:54 AM
From: TheSlowLane	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 30195

There are message boards to discuss Canadian politics. This isn't one of them...thanks!

To: russet who wrote (3981)	11/12/2006 12:01:50 PM
From: teevee	Respond to of 30195

If the polls start trouncing Conservative popularity numbers, they will likely relent and extend the effective tax holiday period to 7-10 years for oil and gas trusts which nearly exceeds their reserve life and net asset value calculations. Thus Canadian oil and gas trusts become something like the American ones that can't add tax free reserves to their assets. The so called "George Bush wannabe" would then succeed in Americanizing our oil and gas trusts along with our reits. If you did a poll of family, friends and neighbours, how many were side swiped by the new trust tax legislation? Do easterners also vote with their wallets? Regarding the Liberal leadership convention on the 28th, my call is that Stephene Dion will win. If he does, I can see a Liberal majority in the next Federal election, as soon as the Liberals can convince the ND's to go along with bringing down the gov't. If either Rae or Ignatieff win, it will be a happy day for Harper. I will be voting Green federally and Tory provincially.