Canadian Business Magazine on The Marshall Savings Plan

Letters
March 15, 2010
Canadian Business Magazine

Man with a Plan

I expected more from Al Rosen in investigating whether the government’s assertion that income trusts cause tax leakage was true (in “The lost decade that was too good to be true”, February 15).

A collaborative study in 2005, by HLB Decision Economics and the Department of Finance shows that income trusts do not cause tax leakage. Instead, the government’s faulty analysis causes tax leakage by leaving out all of the tax collected from the 38% of trusts held in RRSPs.

Our association has come up with a solution called the Marshall Savings Plan solution (www.marshallplan.ca) that turns these tomorrow taxes into today’s taxes and helps address Canada’s deficit crisis by preserving the $6 billion in taxes from the remaining 169 trusts currently pay, and deals with Canada’s pension crisis by preserving this essential profit-sharing investment choice for the 75% of Canadians without pensions, who are double-taxed on income trusts, whereas the 25% of Canadians are not.

Brent Fullard
(Volunteer) President and CEO
Canadian Association of Income Trust Investors/Taxpayers
Toronto