Finance committee  Good morning. My name is Gabe Hayos, and I'm vice-president of taxation with the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants. On behalf of Canada's 78,000 chartered accountants, thank you for the opportunity to appear before this committee. In my remarks today, I will cover the

Finance committee  I'll just repeat a comment on the government's program on expenditure reduction. First, I agree that they should be doing that generally. The fact that they are doing it sort of across the board is maybe a bit of the easy approach. To some extent, I would have appreciated a more

Finance committee  The CICA has been quite public about that, and you couldn't have stated it better. We believe that would add a significant amount of simplification. Frankly, the evidence we have shows that most of the people who could benefit from those credits don't even understand them or can

Finance committee  Exactly, so it's not really encouraging any increase. We just think that a general rate reduction, tax reduction, for the people you mentioned is exactly the approach that should be taken.

Finance committee  I think that's probably something that requires a bit more study. There are a number of provisions in the Income Tax Act that actually do allow for rollovers, some between generations and some in the public sector. I think there are number of implications with what you propose. I

Finance committee  First, there are innumerable economic studies. Jack Mintz recently did studies supporting the fact that lowering the Canadian income tax rate does generate jobs. As for the comment on the cash that's retained by corporations, they'll invest the cash when they have good opportun

Finance committee  I'm not sure I got all of that, but first, as far as refundability is concerned, our position is that there is some broader refundability that would be appropriate, and that's actually to attract business into Canada. Right now what happens is that foreign companies, for example,

Finance committee  Sorry, is there a question...?

Finance committee  I agree. I think some of the changes that have targeted some very aggressive tax planning are appropriate. I think the only comment we would have is that, as I said, what happens when we introduce legislation is that it tends to be far too broad and it captures the innocent com

Finance committee  Unfortunately, I'm not sure I captured that question. Could you try very briefly again?

Finance committee  It only exists to a limited extent. I think in the theme of trying to make sure that Canadians comply, as opposed to forcing them to take penalties for innocent errors, it's important that this be much more broad than what currently exists.

Finance committee  I think that's fair. In my discussions, I'm seeing sort of a broad.... It's a fair comment that it hasn't formally been announced, so I agree with that comment.

Finance committee  Yes.

Finance committee  Yes, in my experience, I think that's a great approach. You don't know how effective it will be in this circumstance; only time will tell, but I think that is an excellent approach, and I've seen many experiences where it's been very productive.

Finance committee  No, we don't have it at this point. But it's something that we would look to provide to the committee, because it's something we believe in.