What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? It is all about paying Taxes!

In life you are fined for doing things wrong. That is punishment for wrong doing.

Taxes are punishment for doing things right. Making money is a right thing to do. Taxes punish you for rightdoing.

One would think that working hard and creating jobs and prosperity for the country is a good thing. It must not be good because we get all kinds of tax punishment for being profitable.

Small business and investors are under an ever increasing assault against their financial well being. CRA does not care what individual corporation or taxpayer goes bankrupt.

There is a Tax Fairness Provision but it is not fair.

There is Tax Amnesty, Voluntary Disclosure, but that is a horrible trap where you could find yourself in a boiling pot of tax trouble.

There is a Tax Ombudsman, but only for when you have exhausted all other options to resolve problems.

You can fight CRA in court, but normally that is more expensive than paying taxes, so the small guy is out of luck because legal justice is usually not affordable for the average Canadian taxpayer who is suffering from tax abuse.

The minister of finance claims that the aggressive assault by CRA on Canadians is to ensure fairness. That is such a load of bull. If it was about fairness then CRA would be fair when they audit. CRA does not even care if they tax phantom income (income on paper that you never actually received and may have already lost) that is just one example of unfairness, there is not enough time to go that tangent any further today…

So there we have it…. As in the days of old, the Kings of Bold, paid the serfs in gold and taxed back every ounce of gold not needed for bare essentials. They kept the serfs poor and controlled them by way of taxes.

How is it any different today? The answer is the only thing different, the only thing new is the complexity and the increased level of tax collector aggression.

Read on for what is going on with CRA today; It is really quite scary.

For more info go to [1] www.taxauditsolutions.ca

Dan White

If you have tax problems requiring a strong CRA tax fighter, please email me;

dw@911taxes.com

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Taxmen wield powerful arsenal

Whistleblower laws, exchange of information rules

Vern Krishna, Financial Post  Published: Wednesday, January 06, 2010

In this story:

Whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld was jailed for 40 months. Getty Images Whistleblower Bradley Birkenfeld was jailed for 40 months.

Exchange of information laws combined with whistleblower legislation are powerful tools in the arsenal of tax authorities. As global economies and international trade expand, so also do the problems of tax compliance and administration. The Union Bank of Switzerland versus the United States legal saga illustrates that one man’s meat is another man’s poison.

The so-called Revenue Rule prevents nations from using conventional judicial channels to enforce their tax laws in a foreign jurisdiction. So countries use tax treaties to override the common law by providing for exchange of information and assistance through administrative channels.

For example, the United States used the U.S.-Swiss Treaty to extract banking information from UBS, after one of the bank’s former employees, Bradley Birkenfeld, blew the whistle on UBS and divulged tax-evasion secrets to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Swiss government and UBS must hand over names of 4,450 U.S. taxpayers believed to be hiding assets in secret bank accounts. About 14,000 UBS clients stepped up to plead and negotiate tax-evasion charges as a result of the whistleblower’s information. For his part, Birkenfeld was sentenced to 40 months in a plea bargain.

The Canada-U. S. Tax Treaty also allows the Canada Revenue Agency and the Internal Revenue Service of the United States to request information from each other so that they can properly administer their taxes. However, there are legal constraints on the exchange-of-information rules. Under U.S. law, the IRS will not honour summonses unless it can show that it issued the summons in good faith. The critical question is not whether the investigation by the foreign tax authority is legitimate, but whether the compliance of the IRS with the request of the foreign tax authority is legitimate.

Taxpayers who engage in international trade and commerce can expect greater scrutiny from tax administrations. We will see more exchange-of-information legal issues as the CRA requests files on Canadians from foreign governments with whom we have tax treaties.

Birkenfeld’s fortunes change when he completes his federal prison sentence. Under the whistleblower law, he can collect 15% to 30% of the taxes, fines, penalties and interest that the IRS ultimately stands to collect. The payoff will run into the billions. The tax collector and the whistleblower are both smiling at their meat as the taxpayers drink their poison.

-Prof. Vern Krishna, CM, QC, FCGA, is tax counsel and a mediator and arbitrator at Borden Ladner Gervais and is executive director of the CGA Tax Research Centre at the University of Ottawa.

Read more: http://www.financialpost.com/news-sectors/legal/story.html?id=2409645#ixzz0bwDr3zNe
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