Saturday, March 10, 2012
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CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF INCOME TRUST INVESTORS WEBLOG
As you well know, the ‘income trust thing’ has grown beyond the question of whether fair taxes are paid on income from trusts. It’s become a giant dirty snowball, and as it rolls forward it accumulates more and more bulk. There are so many unanswered questions. Let's list a few and invite our "Accountable" government and our free press to provide some much-needed answers.
It is said “Trusts are inefficient use of capital. Why?” Two related questions are ‘Whose money is it, anyway?’, and ‘Do Canadian investors have a free and efficient market?’
How can information that is already in the public domain at SEDAR make for a state secret? How could such information be used to harm the Canadian national interest? And who would cause the harm?
Why won’t the Canadian media investigate the falsehoods and misrepresentations told by the Minister of Finance to a committee of Parliament? Was the Minister in contempt of Parliament?
Why won’t the Canadian media report (a) government tax revenues gained from BCE in 2006 when BCE was a corporation to (b) government tax revenues that would be gained in 2007 from BCE, if BCE had been allowed to proceed to a trust, and (c) government tax revenues that will be gained in 2007 from BCE, when BCE ownership has been carved up as 45% foreign ownership and 55% large Canadian pension fund ownership?
5 comments:
How about BLDSKRR
Dr Mike Popovich
Very creative - love the reference to the CAITI billboards!
Now a request ... this caught my attention in the Gag and seems to be worth discussing on this forum. (i.e. have CEO stock options increased since the income trust thing?) Thanks in advance.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/economy-lab/the-economists/a-simple-way-to-tax-the-rich/article2364184/
Thanks!
On stock options, it matters not whether they may have increased in value since the trust tax announcement, but more that the trust model of investment means that the managers of the business are not compensated by the roulette wheel known as stock options, and hence those CEOs intent on preserving this roulette wheel form of compensation were the ones that lobbied to kill income trusts. One such person was Dominic D'allesandro, CEO of Manulife, who testified in Parliament against income trusts, as he wanted to preserve his roulette wheel of compensation known as stock options. He in fact did, but unfortunately this form of "heads I win, tails you lose" compensation package lead him to make some reckless decisions concerning the liabilities inherent in his Income PLus product, that nearly blew the company up, and along with any of his (ill gotten)?) stock options gains.
The roulette wheel analogy is actually an inaccurate analogy insofar as at the roulette table you gamble with your own money, but at Dominic of Manulife proved with stock options, he was gambling with Manulife's policyholders and shareholders money.
Stock options and the bad behaviours they engender explains 99% of what was the cause and economic impetus behind the US meltdown arising from the subprime mortgage meltdown.
Meanwhile government is a large part to blame as they treat stock option gains as capital gains, ie at 50% of the tax rate of employment income even though stock option gains are employment income and no capital is at risk (as in the case of things that are taxed at the capital gain rates of taxation).
Take a look at what Roger Martin of Rotman School has said about stock options, even though he was dead wrong about income trusts.
Merci ... very insightful and helpful.
Besides some of the content in the Gag article, this reply also helped further explain some shareholder proposals for the banks this year. While scanning through the annual reports, It appears as though the banks are trying to increase stock options for their CEO's ... needless to say when the banks recommended voting against the MEDAC (Fr Canadian based shareholders group) proposals I felt it best to vote for. Especially since those elitist bank CEO's can afford to start paying more personal income tax ... There, off to go look up Roger Martin and of course I will ignore his position on income trusts.
Thanks again.
You're welcome.
I have written on the topic of stock options many times on this blog. Here is one such posting:
http://caiti-online.blogspot.com/2009/01/asymmetrical-executive-compensation-is.html
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