Member-only story
Implementing New Tax Laws
Let’s get those tax cheats!
This series How to Dodge Taxes describes some of the techniques the wealthy and corporations use to reduce taxes. Some are legal. Some are not. Many of the illegal activities are difficult to prove in a court of law. It is natural for readers of this series to believe that writing new tax laws will solve the problem.
Writing new tax laws is not that easy. Our legislatures already work too slow for the 21st century. So introducing new tax bills means other societal issues are not addressed. Then there are the politicians wanting to score political points by telling us how the thousands of tax laws are already persecuting average citizens, keeping them from accomplishing better things for themselves.
While I’m far from an expert, here is my assessment of the state of our tax laws. If we put all these laws into 20 volumes, only one of those volumes would apply to wage and salary earners, which is about 90% of us. And the process to calculate taxes on this income is fairly straightforward; most Canadian accountants charge $200 for preparing these tax returns. Filing personal tax returns is not a hardship for most of us.
The second volume is the rules for small business. Small businesses pay a tax on the profits, which is the difference between revenue and expenses. This volume…
