While watching the CTV news at 11, I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard the claim by CRA that taxes due from Canadians holding secret bank accounts in Lichtenstein prior to the signing of the DTA were uncollectable due to Canadian privacy laws. You can hear this for yourself
http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?playlistId=1.1223543
Kevin Newman interviewed a Lichtenstein official for this short clip; there will be a segment on W5 this Saturday at 7 pm. The whistleblower on the 100 Canadians with Lichtenstein accounts will be featured.
My goodness, I do believe we can use this!
is it preparation for your country to vote to remove privacy laws so that FATCA can be jammed in?
@Mark Twain
It all does seem a bit too coincidental and convenient, doesn’t it? I think we’re being softened-up for an impending FATCA IGA announcement.
@Mark Twain,
We wouldn’t get to vote on this; we can only hope the government has to present it to Parliament. Not quite as direct a democracy as Switzerland.
@Deckard,
Softened? Super-super betrayed is more like it, don’t you think? Some Canadians who are really cheating will have their information protected while others who are not cheating can count on being turned over to the Americans? I can tell you, it isn’t “softening” me that’s for sure! 😉 We know the signing has basically happened, now I guess we can look forward to the lawsuits.
@nobledreamer
I meant “softened-up” in the same way Americans usually go in with B-2 bombers prior to a ground invasion. Don’t get me wrong – I’m no apologist for the very real, egregious crimes that the ultra rich and powerful who are mentioned in the reports have gotten away with. What’s depressing is what you’re getting at – that the innocent will now be painted with the same brush of suspicion and guilt and made to suffer for no reason.
Unfortunately, it may become well nigh impossible to explain the evils of FATCA in this newly-charged environment. The sudden exposure of so many genuine tax criminals will make it even harder for us to get any kind of understanding or support. Kind of like being a moderate, peaceful Muslim in a world of radical Islamic terrorism. We now have an even more monumental PR challenge ahead of us than we did just 24 hours ago.
Its complex but I feel this tv clip was inaccurate. The privacy law issue is this CRA does not have to make public any information about tax violations UNLESS they take formal legal action. So in theory CRA tell someone we have received information Liechtenstein that you owe us X in taxes however on YOUR return you only reported Y in income please pay CRA X plus penalties. The person in question then can simply PAY CRA X plus penalties and it will not become public knowledge that they had engaged in a violation of the law.
Now CRA can choose to bring civil or criminal charges however in the case of civil penalties that is more going to arise where in the above situation when someone refuses to pay X plus penalties and then CRA starts applying liens etc(This is what happened with Ontario PC MPP Randy Hillier). Now criminal penalties. Well lets put it this way Canada has a much different tradition of criminal prosecution than the US in all areas of the law. Probably more people should be prosecuted for criminal tax violations in Canada but realistically you aren’t going to prosecute even 50 people never mind a 100. As I side the system of criminal law is much different in Canada than the US.
negative attack ad against Randy Hillier by Ontario Liberal Party
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VJPbGkRcvw
Note: Randy Hillier WAS re-elected
@Deckard
I get you and totally agree. What a difference 24 hours makes, eh. And really, why should we be surprised? These stories don’t just appear out of thin air. The CBC one is probably worse! Art Cockfield comments a lot in that story.
@Tim
Thanks for that explanation. I have come to understand the difference in the US approach and Canada’s.
I know who I’d rather deal with. 🙂
Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and rub out Edward Bernays before his mind became a dangerous weapon. Expect to see and hear more of these subtle, soft-kill propaganda pieces as they rev up the FATCA IGA bus engine and prepare to roll it out of its secret bunker. The idea is to make everyone believe that anyone with money or property offshore is a tax evader and they have to relieve everyone of their privacy rights in order to track down those evil-doers. After “offshore” and “evader” are slyly embedded into the minds of Canadians via the main stream media then it will be easier to convince them that Canada must dance the info-exchange do-si-do with other countries in order to make sure not a penny of tax escapes the CRA. Poor Mr. and Mrs. Honest Canuck who used money taxed in Canada to buy a winter getaway in Florida will be viewed with as much suspicion as Mr. Dicey Canucklehead who stashes his cash in Barbados. And the same goes for those shifty Americans who must have moved to Canada to avoid their due diligence to the IRS. Meanwhile for some Canadian corporate directors and shareholders it will be business as usual, in private, in the tax haven of Delaware. Looks like things are getting tougher for anti-FATCAnites but we still have to keep fighting.
Sounds to me like the message is: Canadian privacy laws that protect tax evaders stand in the way of justice.
It will be interesting to eventually hear whether 1M Canadian citizens and permanent residents with US personhood will be distinguished from the nasty lot, or if we’ll be painted with the same brush by the media. There are so many of us with families, so many who are only US citizens through descent. It’s unfathomable that the Canadian government would want to cause so much grief for so many of THEIR OWN in order to enforce the extraterritorial laws of another country. Surreal, really.
PotAtoe, Potatoe?; TomAto, Tomato?; Tax Evasion, Tax Avoidance?
http://www.fin.gc.ca/treaties-conventions/Liechtenstein-1-eng.asp