Welcome to the Cook Islands ... Sun, sand, surf, and hiding your money from your government.
Numerous leaked documents about offshore tax havens that finger hundreds of individuals seems astonishing but is really nothing new.
I recall years ago someone was fighting to have the Bronfman family, most noted for making a fortune with the family run Seagram Company Ltd., pay taxes on a trust worth five million that was moved out of Canada.
This was under the Liberals 10 year plus fiefdom in federal politics in the nineties.
It seems the Conservatives are just as inept or unwilling do anything about wealthy tax evasion either.
Estimates for loses in Canadian tax dollars runs upwards of seven billion for wealthy tax evaders.
Cutting funding to the Canada Revenue Agency means the agency has less teeth to go after the big fish, if they ever were really going after the big fish at all.
No one should get away with tax evasion, but when you predominately prosecute the little fish you set a double standard by worrying the poor and middle class about the specter of being audited while telling the wealthy upper class you shouldn't be tax dodging but we really aren't going to do anything about it anyway.
I say that if within the next year if the current federal government does not rectify this rampant wealthy tax evasion then we have an all out tax revolt where on mass we refuse file our income tax.
