Your Jan. 6-12, 2006, editorial concerning the RCMP and Finance Minister Ralph Goodale leaves me puzzled. One paragraph says that income trusts allow “a company to virtually cease paying taxes and instead pay out most of its profits to its unitholders, who may or may not pay tax.”
I would indeed appreciate an accurate statistic regarding how many citizens of Canada possess income trusts and do not pay income taxes. How do professional people (teachers, doctors, journalists, dentists, and engineers, like myself), gather enough income to maintain something close to our working day’s standard of living unless we have cash flow in addition to the old-age pension? Cash flow from trust units is double or more on average than cash flow from dividends. I was surprised at Goodale’s initiative to consider taxing the trust unit companies. Probably he was just surprised at the abundance of dissatisfaction from the public and at least one brokerage firm.
I do pay taxes on my income from trust units. I did save for my old age, and would like to continue to retire from being retired comfortably without being disrupted by Goodale’s initiative. His government certainly does not pay enough pension to allow that. The income tax sleuths in government probably would like to know if any of us retired from professional life, with income also from personal savings, do not pay taxes in the appropriate tax bracket.
After the news generated by Justice John Gomery’s inquiry, I prefer to spend my cash flow after taxes my own way, rather than the government’s. My foreign aid is a substantial percentage of that cash flow, and goes to Mexico where I control several mines of old with silver and gold, where only the gossan was mined and reported to be a “bonanza.”
Taxes should not be paid twice, first by the company, and a second time by myself as a unit holder in the company.
R.H. Seraphim
Vancouver, B.C.
Be the first to comment on "Tax should be paid but once"