Sunday, March 8, 2009

The Hill Times: Income trust tax needs to be repealed


Income trust tax needs to be repealed
The Harper government must come clean on its allegations of tax leakage, since it is the policy that is causing tax leakage.

By: Brent Fullard
The Hill Times
March 9, 2009

TORONTO—Can bankers meet the financing needs of corporate Canada? This is the topical question that was posed in the Financial Post on Feb. 22, 2009, and which should be on the minds of every politician and policy maker in Ottawa

In short, the answer is no.

Meeting the financing needs of corporate Canada requires that a full suite of financing options be available to corporations, that will allow them to sustain themselves over the full business cycle. Actions by the Harper government have served to limit the financing choices that are available to corporate Canada. These actions have significantly reduced the availability of much needed capital to Canadian businesses, as I shall explain below.

A full suite of financing options to corporate Canada is necessary as to the health and vibrancy of the private sector what a deep gene pool is to enhancing the survival of species in the natural world. Diversity is strength.

The over reliance on debt in the corporate sector, motivated by a desire to increase equity returns for shareholders, is proving itself to be as imprudent a strategy for business as it has been for consumers. The examples of over reliance on debt financing are all around us. Canwest Global has seen itself become a penny stock on the verge of bankruptcy after binging on acquisitions funded solely through billions in debt. The once icon of corporate Canada, Nova Chemicals, is being sold to Abu Dhabi’s IPIC: Nova’s excessive debt burden is cited as the impetus for the sale. The approval of BCE’s debt leveraged buyout by then Industry Minster Jim Prentice was oblivious to the fact that Canada’s largest telco would have been insolvent from the get-go, with $35-billion of debt as a result of its leveraged buy-out. Fortunately, others more mindful of that reality stepped in to prevent this adverse outcome.

By definition, making capital available to Canadian enterprise requires that the investment be attractive to both the capital provider and the capital user. However, policy makers in Ottawa arbitrarily decided to kill a new form of investment capital, namely income trusts that had proven popular with the providers of capital, in particular Canadian and U.S. retail investors, seeking income for retirement, as well as with capital users. The income trust market had grown to over $200-billion and, prior to the Halloween surprise of 2006, was responsible for more than 50 per cent of new issue capital being raised in Canada, and which fell to zero immediately thereafter. Income trusts were a unique evolutionary product of the Canadian capital markets that incorporated the hybrid attributes of both debt and equity. Like debt, income trusts provided investors with much sought after investment income. Importantly however, unlike debt, the distributions on income trusts are not obligatory payments for the issuer. Hence, failure to pay, will not throw a company into bankruptcy.

Furthermore, unlike debt, income trust units have no fixed maturity date that requires the repayment of principal. Therefore, there is no chance for default causing bankruptcy. The corollary, however, for investors, is that by having no maturity date, investors avoid reinvestment risk, and income trusts are able to increase their distributions in line with the real growth of their available cash flow. This provides a built-in mechanism for inflation protection and the potential for equity like returns.

The Harper government’s rationale for killing income trusts—by a 31.5 per cent tax on their distributions—was premised on the unproven argument that income trusts cause tax leakage and that income trusts somehow had a negative effect on the economy. Both of these propositions are false They have been refuted by every credible study performed to test these arguments. Having created a market that reached a scale of $200-billion in the fall of 2006, generating underwriting fees in excess of $5-billion between 1996 and 2006, the banks as major participants of the Canadian capital markets were notably conspicuous by their absence when Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s income trust tax was announced on Oct. 31, 2006. Further, there was absolutely no public consultation. The new tax was premised on arguments that the Canadian banks knew to be patently false, most notably the one about tax leakage.

Could it have been that Canadian banks began to fear the competitive threat that income trusts represented to their mainline business of debt lending? Did the Canadian bank oligopoly fear that Canadians retail investors would “disintermediate” them from their traditional lending business? Were the banks concerned that income trusts were more in keeping with a “buy-and-hold” strategy, and so were not able to provide for the ongoing generation of bank brokerage fees, normally associated with the “buy-and-sell” strategy of common shares?

Whatever the reasons and whatever the rationale, the point is simply that income trusts need to be restored for a whole host of reasons that I can only sketch here. First, there never was adequate policy justification or proof to support their elimination by the Harper government in the first place. Second, the 75 per cent of Canadians without defined benefit pensions who must save for their own retirement have been denied an essential means of providing income in a protracted low interest rate environment, that was preserved for the 25 per cent of Canadians with pensions, who can own private income trusts free of the draconian 31.5 per cent tax. Third, corporate Canada is being denied a robust source of investment capital that afford them “market completeness,” and that is better able to sustain itself over the market cycle, without introducing the systemic risk of additional debt, the dimensions and severity of which are now coming home to roost.

The good news is that the punitive income trust tax does not come into effect for trusts until January 2011. The tax needs to be repealed to the benefit of all Canadians. At the very least, the Harper government must come clean on its allegations of tax leakage, since it is the policy that is causing tax leakage and not income trusts themselves. Can a policy’s outcome be further from its stated objective than that?

Brent Fullard is President of the Canadian
Association of Income Trust Investors.

news@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times

14 comments:

Dr Mike said...

That`s quite a coup in the Hill Times yet.

You would think that anyone with even one reasonable bone in their body would wise-up to what has been done & see that right now is the time to act to help pull the economy out of the crapper---a very simple fix at no cost to the taxpayer , only upside.

The operative word is "reasonable" , after all this is Ottawa.

Dr Mike Popovich

Anonymous said...

It's too late for me man!

Unless they'd like to return the 350+k I've lost since their unproven tax leakage LIE! Besides, how does one re-coup those kinds of losses at 62 (?)

The only comfort I/we have is knowing these CON bastar$s won't collect but the minimum taxes from me (us) for the foreseeable future as we're now classed as 'low income' people!

Small consolation perhaps, but how many others are out there paying minimum tax (?) The CR coffers would probably have been a lot fuller had they left well enough alone, or at least used some common sense in their decision.

An oxymoron (?) A CON and common sense (?)

Herr Harpler and his henchmen 'coming clean' wouldn't benefit the most of us at this late stage...a few public hangings might satisfy though....!

Thanks for the thought...;>)

Fransman

Anonymous said...

good work, Brent.

We should look at the Income Trust as an innovative financial vehicle to save the ailing economy. We should get this idea to the Liberal & the financial market, the income trust is an effective way to obtain new capital in this economic climate.

It is a simple fact that if there is no income there will be no tax, where is the leakage?
To save the Income Trust is to save the economy!

Trustmanic

Anonymous said...

WOW Brent this is fantastic!

Too Bad Cons don't know how to read

Robin

Anonymous said...

Great stuff Brent................ Thanks

Firesole2

Anonymous said...

Brilliant! This is the best you've captured it yet!

Val

Anonymous said...

Robin:

With Cons we need to learn to read between the lines...and between their lying lips.

Polyian

Anonymous said...

Polyian:

LOL that's why Cons don't understand . . . they're always reading the white space in between the FACTS . . . or should I say Blacked Out space LOL

Robin

Anonymous said...

What's amazing this that the Con Facist Goofs have never figured out is that if they had not done the Tax Fairness Plan, they would have had their majority Government last fall. The next election and they can kiss governing power goodbye!

Mary P said...

Here`s hoping that the Liberals & Conservatives quit playing games with the economy & see the repealing of the trust tax for what it is , immediate , no cost economic stimulus.

Thanks again Brent.

Mary P from Rodney

Anonymous said...

Too late for me as well.

But we are letting them off too easy! Now is the time to tie the can to their behinds.

More of the public is likely to be ready to listen now.

How about using a large black 18 on that can. For the 18 blacked- out pages of proof.

Like Nixon's 18 minutes of deleted records

KalPet

Dr Mike said...

You are absolutely right---the time is now when economic stimulus is a priority.

Changes to the Tax Fairness are a no-brainer in a recession/depression in order to lessen the cost of capital to otherwise cash starved companies.

This is a made in Canada solution & MUST be undertaken.

Dr Mike.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for continuing to bring attention to this very important matter. Keep going. This is great. Do whatever it takes to return this 35 billion to the Canadian economy, while protecting those of us who do not have the luxury of a company pension plan.

Eventually regular Canadians will smarten up ... hmmm memories of Brian Mulroney and Kim Campbell getting kicked out of office and those crazy election results. Let's hope it happens again and the exit door whacks Harper, Flaherty and Carney in the ass really, really hard. They all deserve it.

Can't wait to see where a CAITI article will appear next. Or maybe a T.V. appearance of some kind? There have been some really fabulous posts lately ... do I sense a CAITI book about the 35 billion $ lie? Go Brent go. Best of luck with whatever is next. Cheers to this.

Anonymous said...

I 'trust' (that word again) some day (soon I hope) we will learn who was behind the Income Trust Halloween Hoax, and what they stood to gain.

My sense is that some in the oil industry were feeling threatened by energy trusts (see AB Royalty Review documents of 2004 to 2006 for first gleaning of AB govt change of heart.) And we know that Munulife took advantage of the situation to market a competing product.

The perceived problem of income trusts went from a small technical flaw in the Income Tax Act in 2004 to a massive threat to the Canadian economy in 2006. In 2006 it was feared that a hoard of couch potatoes and coupon clippers would invade and enervate the fiscal sinew of the great Canadian equity market.

So Flaherty blunted the threat, and in so doing has killed the TSX as a market for resource and industrial capital formation.

I said "The TSX is dead to new business." So who was the real threat back in 2006?