This is a typical response when you don’t have the facts to back up your position, shoot the messenger, or in Mr. Corcoran’s case vaporize him.
2) Blame the victims
3) Blame the trusts
4) Blame the liberals
Unfortunately for them the truth has a habit of getting out.
CAITI response to the article.
Even if you believe that Steven Harper got it right, (he didn’t) and that income trusts were a serious threat to tax revenue and the Canadian economy the real scandal is in the execution of a policy to fix the alleged problem.
The policy en-acted has created a giant loophole out of which $2 billion a year in tax revenue has already fallen, with another $5.5 billion likely to follow.
The trusts are now easy and cheap targets for other business structures like private equity and pension plans to purchase and restructure in such a way that they pay NO TAX, because unlike the proposal the Liberals studied and dropped, these other structures are except from the tax. This has already happen to the tune of $2 billion a year.
If the tax was abolished tomorrow the remaining tax revenue base of $5.5 billion would be saved.
The Tories complain about the years of alleged Liberal scandals, yet in their first year in power they have out done them and blown $2 billion in tax revenue, lost for every year in the future.
This is the real scandal and the reason the Liberals want the tax stopped now, to save future tax revenue.
Mr Flaherty has to go on record as the most incompetent finance minister ever, in trying to fix an alleged $164 million tax leakage problem he succeeded in creating a black hole which appears destined to suck in all of the tax revenue that income trusts used to generate for the government.
a) The broken promise from the prime minister
b) Over 2 million Canadian victims, and worse from the government point of view these are mainly seniors.
c) Incorrect and faulty analysis of the situation by the finance minister that he attempted to hide with blacked out documents.
d) Ten reports from independent experts that prove the government was wrong.
e) $26 billion in takeovers leading to the above mentioned tax revenue loss and worse from the government point of view many of these were to foreign entities.
f) A government that does not want to discuss the income trust issue and is trying to sweep the foreign takeover issue under the carpet with yet another government panel.
This scandal is a gift from heaven for a struggling opposition, its time to let the liberal attack dogs out.
In June, the Prime Minister promised all provinces that he would not treat some differently than others, and that they would all operate on a level playing field.
Today he flip-flopped on his promise that he would never sign side deals on the Atlantic Accord by signing one with
Break another promise! Life sure gets complicated when you lie and break promises.
This has the honour of position number 43 on the list of broken promises.
How would you like your promises broken?
I took two highly biased lists of broken promises, my own list of Stephen Harper's and the conservatives list of Paul Martin's to see if there is a difference in their approach to this tricky subject.
The way promises are broken fell into two categories.
1) The failure to perform, or why did I make that dumb promise?
2) Doing something different than was promised maybe even the exact opposite of what you promised, the stab in the back.
Where Harper is really ahead is in doing the “exact opposite of what you promised” category using multiple knives assisted perhaps by the finance minister.
Income trust investors know all about this one, promise never to tax trusts, then as a result watch all those poor trusting seniors pour their money in, and when they are feeling nice and comfortable it’s time for the stab in the back.
