News Archive

There are two problems with gender bias of the tax system – a disproportionate benefit to men at the top incomes from tax breaks; and a loss of revenues for programs that mostly benefit women at the lower incomes.
Tax loopholes are used almost exclusively by top income earners, businesses and CEOs to maximize their bottom line and pay as little tax as possible. These include the Capital Gains Deduction, Employee Stock Options Deduction, the Meals and Entertainment Deduction and the Dividend Gross-up Credit. They also use private corporations for the same purpose.
“These are not gender neutral” says Diana Gibson, Communications Director for Canadians for Tax Fairness, “Women only accounted for 22% of the top 1% of income earners, 3 out of 100 top CEOs in Canada, 15.7 percent of majority owned small and medium sized businesses.”
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Victoria, B.C.: Canadians For Tax Fairness, Publish What You Pay Canada, and Transparency International Canada welcome commitments made by the B.C. Government to require that information on the true owners of B.C. properties be collected and be made public by the land registry; however, a publicly accessible registry to reveal hidden owners of companies is missing.
A public corporate registry of beneficial owners is critical for tackling money laundering, tax evasion, and other criminal activities within the province.
B.C. is certainly taking a bold step to prevent misuse of real estate by money launderers, and the commitment within the 2018 provincial budget to include beneficial ownership information within its property transfer tax form and to make it publicly accessible is much needed.
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New report shows how Rio Tinto, and its Canadian subsidiary Turquoise Hill Resources, used mailbox companies in two tax havens, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, to avoid nearly $470 million in Canadian taxes from one mine.
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TORONTO - 90% of Canadians think that the use of tax havens by large corporations to avoid paying taxes is morally wrong, even if it’s legal, according to a new Environics poll for Canadians for Tax Fairness and Leadnow.
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Ottawa: Canadians For Tax Fairness, Publish What You Pay Canada, and Transparency International Canada applaud the announcement by the federal, provincial and territorial Finance Ministers today of cooperation on transparency of beneficial owners
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A new report, “Bay Street and Tax Havens: Curbing Corporate Canada’s Addiction,” explores the extent of corporate Canada’s involvement in known tax havens and provides clear recommendations for a strong government response.
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Paradise Papers leaks from Appleby offshore law firm is much bigger than the Panama Papers and reveals details on many more Canadian companies and wealthy individuals using tax havens - over 3400.
Based on this new data and updated estimates that over $500 billion in tax revenue is lost globally due to corporate tax dodging using tax havens, Canadians for Tax Fairness has revised its estimate of Canadian tax losses due to tax havens to between $10 to $15 billion a year - up from our previous estimate of $5 to $8 billion a year.
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More revenue is needed for the government to take bolder measures on child care, climate change and poverty. Over $23 billion could be raised by closing unfair and ineffective tax loopholes, curbing corporate offshore tax dodging and Taxing foreign-based E-commerce Companies to Level the Playing Field.
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Canadians for Tax Fairness welcomes the news that the government is going ahead with private corporation tax reforms. And the tweaks announced today sound reasonable. But a cut in the tax rate to 9% for small businesses is unlikely to do anything to boost jobs or the economy and could cost more than the savings from closing the private corporation tax loophole.
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And calls on government to close other unfair and ineffective tax loopholes.
Dennis Howlett, Executive Director of Canadians for Tax Fairness appeared before the House of Commons Finance Committee at its September 26 hearing on Tax Planning Using Private Corporations. He supported the governemnt's proposed changes to limit the use of private corporations to avoid paying taxes, but called for further action to close other loopholes such as the stock option deduction, the capital gains exemption and the business entertainment tax deduction.