Financial services reporter John Greenwood raises important questions in Friday’s Financial Post (FP Street - A taxing pursuit) about big-time Canadian tax cheats and the apparent reluctance of the Canada Revenue Agency to bring them to justice.
Goodwood says the CRA has come into possession of more than 1,000 names of scofflaws who stash tax-free cash in secret European bank accounts.
“However, despite harsh criminal penalties for tax evasion in this country, not a single one of those account holders has gone to jail,” he says.
Goodwood is far from impressed with CRA’s record.
Most of its “success” has come from a voluntary disclosure program that allows cheats to confess without penalty, he says. Other cases were related to organized crime activities in Montreal, a couple of small companies, a piano player who failed to declare U.S. property and the operator of an offshore gambling site.
In fact, CRA’s record is darned insipid – almost wilfully insipid -- compared to the aggressive efforts of U.S. authorities to reclaim some of an estimated $100-billion slippage to the offshore tax dodge.
I guess Canada doesn’t need the money right now. The rest of us don’t mind paying more, thank you. Or maybe it’s just so much easier to pluck the feathers off terrified low- and middle-income taxpayers. Oh, heck. Why not both? We’ll pay more and you can turn our lives into a living hell at the same time!
In any case, if the CRA is not going to use its lists of tax cheats, perhaps the agency would consider publishing the names for us to see.
That way, we could cheerfully disregard these fine Canadians when they pop up on our TV screens bleating for more tax cuts and corporate subsidies.
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