RESEARCH ARTICLES
QUOTE:
The question is, how many more companies are going to turn themselves into trusts? ...there’s simply not enough appetite ...for unlimited trust conversions.
QUOTE:
This deferral of taxes is a very good planning technique to deal with the aging population. You tax the income when you need the tax revenue.
“The point investors should take away here is not that trusts have zero effect on federal government tax revenues, but rather that the problem may not be as severe as it’s sometimes billed.”
And furthermore, on the trust market at the time of policy uncertainty in 2006:
QUOTE:
I see no impetus for the federal government to do anything about trusts...We keep hearing they have to do something, but why?
“...the previous Liberal government’s own tally of taxes lost to trusts was $300-million. That was the number cited by then finance minister Ralph Goodale last November when he announced that taxes on dividends would decline in order to draw investor interest away from trusts...it’s overly simplistic to look at these conversions strictly as a drain on taxes.”
The tax argument, as far as I can tell, sure isn’t enough to make a minority government come out and do something
FROM: Article by Rob Carrick
ROB, Globe & Mail
Mr. Mintz is right in fact but wrong in scope. By focusing only on trusts he is missing the true scope of corporate tax erosion that is occurring due to alternative capital structures using interest stripping to remove from Canada pre-tax profits.
QUOTE:
Criticism of the planned conversion of Telus into a trust is “very superficial”. It’s by no means a tax dodge and won’t handicap the firm’s ability to reinvest and grow.