Finance committee  Well, from being the chair of the tax executive of the Ontario Bar Association, I know there are members of our executive who are tax lawyers who either work at a bank or advise banks. The amount of administrative nightmare they're going through to comply with FATCA is a common c

Finance committee  Sure. I'll just answer the first part of your question—and it's a great question. I think the government has to make the choice as to whether, if prosecutions are difficult and the information is difficult to find, we're not going to go after the speeders who are going 110, 120

Finance committee  I have just a 10-second comment on Starbucks. I guess the question is whether there's any proof of unfair competition to the extent that if Starbucks is selling coffee at $3.00 a shot, does that mean the local retailer is being prejudiced? That would be a question I would like to

Finance committee  I think you're right. First of all, as I said in my submission, the voluntary disclosure program is working and I think it works relatively well. The government has improved the voluntary disclosure program and has actually tightened it up. Our firm does one voluntary disclosure

Finance committee  Sure. Let me just address the tax evasion issue and the number of prosecutions. You are absolutely correct that it is much more difficult for the crown to mount a successful prosecution for someone who has evaded tax because of the charter rights that apply, the higher burden of

Finance committee  It's possible.

Finance committee  I think you are doing the right thing by asking the CRA to come here and talk about that. With respect to your other question about one of my recommendations, which is similar to the IRS whistle-blower program, I think frankly money talks. Because the information offshore is so

Finance committee  There you go.

Finance committee  Your questions are excellent. The unitary tax would require a complete rejigging of the international tax system in terms of how that's based. I think it's worthy of study. I think it would be very difficult to implement. I think you'd need to have an almost global tax-collecting

Finance committee  There are actually enough laws and regulations for the Canada Revenue Agency to get the information they need. If there's a transaction going through Barbados or Ireland or wherever Canada has a double tax treaty, there is already legislation on exchange of information and there

Finance committee  That's true, and the Canada Revenue Agency's website has a page devoted to convictions where they show the last three months of convictions. Maybe this would be something for the committee to get information on in terms of the referrals that are coming from the RCMP or FINTRAC, o

Finance committee  I think there's a fundamental difference between when the Canada Revenue Agency talks about the object and spirit or the intention of the legislation versus the letter of the law itself. Canada has introduced what is known as the general anti-avoidance rule. I'm familiar with t

Finance committee  As my initial action, I was reminded of that point in Shakespeare's Henry VI , part 2, when Dick the butcher says to Smith the weaver that if he were king he'd kill all the lawyers. That was my initial reaction to this, that it's always “blame the lawyers”.

Finance committee  The room actually got a little warm. It doesn't surprise me, because there is the existential dilemma between a self-reporting and a self-assessing system, and there is a market economy and competition amongst law firms and accounting firms to attract and to retain clients. I

Finance committee  I think the United States is in a unique position because it taxes its citizens based on citizenship. So if a U.S. citizen lives in the Bahamas, they still have to file a report of U.S. return. Same thing in Canada. The problem with FATCA is that essentially it's the extraterrit