Behind Closed Doors
de Linda McQuaig

How The Rich Won Control of Canada`s
Tax System... And Ended Up Richer

Contents

Introduction

“This isn`t a tax reform; this is tax deform.”
-- Neil Brooks, commenting on Michael Wilson`s white paper on tax reform

Chapter one
How the System Works... Against You

“in every community, those who feel the burdens of taxation are naturally prone to relieve themselves from it if they can. One class struggles to throw the burden off its shoulders. If they succeed, of course, it must fall upon others. They also, in turn, labour to get rid of it and finally the load falls upon those who will not, or cannot, make a successful effort for relief.... This is in general a one-sided struggle, in which the rich only engage and... in which the poor always go to wall.”
-- Attorney James C. Carter in an 1895 address to the U.S. Supreme Court

“No conscription of men without conscription of wealth!”
--rallying cry of Canadian farmers and workers lobbying for an income tax during World War I

Chapter Two
Tax Haven in the Snow

“I am a brigand: I live by robbing the rich”
“I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.”
--from George Bernard Shaw`s Man and Superman

Chapter Three
The Confidence Game

“If you ask me when we expect to pay these, I`ll tell you never.”
--Consolidated Bathrust Limited controller Jean-Jacques Carrier commenting on the $218 million in taxes his company “owes” Ottawa

Chapter Four
The Cosy World of Tax

“What do you guys tell your kids you do for a living?”
--Neil Brooks, speaking to a conference of tax lawyers and accountants in Toronto in October 1985

Chapter Five
How a Nice Bay Street Accountant Ended Up Hated by His Neighbours:
Teh tale of Kenneth Carter

“It is probably fair, rational and even inevitable. And yet –somehow it`s a rape.”
-- Montreal accountant Hebert Spindler commenting on the report of the Carter Royal Commission on Taxation

Chapter Six
Running Scared: How Ottawa Handled Tax Reform

“Given the complexity and the political sensitivity of the task; the wonder about tax reform is, as Dr Johnson said with respect to s dog dancing on its hind legs, that it can be done at all rather than whether it can be done well...”
--Robert D. Brown, vice-chair man, Price Waterhouse, Toronto

Chapter Seven
Revenge of the Lobbyists

“To tax and to please, no more than to love and be wise, is not given to man.”
--Edmund Burke

Chapter Eight
The Cosy World of Tax Meets the Kilted Priest:
Allan MacEachen`s November 1981 Budget

“The big boys of business and finance are the real source of trouble”
--Rev. Mopses Coady, leader of the Antigonish Movement and mentor of Allan MacEachen

“Immense power and despotic economic domination is concentrated in the hands of a few.... The whole economic life has become hard, cruel and relentless in a ghastly measure.”
Pope Pius XI, in a 1931 Papal encyclical

“Tax reform is the hobby horse of every radical bourgeois.”
--Karl Marx

Chapter Nine
Tax Credit for sale: No Experience Necessary

“What Finance officials did not know was that there were so many dishonest Canadians....”
--deputy finance minister Stanley Hartt, May 1986, commenting on the abuse of the Scientific Research Tax Credit

Chapter Ten
Mickey Cohen: Courtier in the Cosy World of Tax

“You ought to obey your Prince in all things that tend to his Profit and Honour.... I would therefore have our Courtier... adore the prince he serves above all other Things, and in every minute Circumstance endeavour to please him.”
--from Castiglione`s The Courtier, 1531

Chapter Eleven
Deficit Mania:How Ottawa Raised Taxes for Everyone but the Rich

“Taxes are distinctly disagreeable burdens, and so there is a constant striving to place them on the backs of others.”
--Louis Eisenstein

Chapter Twelve
Michael Wilson and the Hijacking of Tax Reform

“It`s unconscionable that they pay so little tax.”
--Donald Blenkard, Chairman of the house of Commons finance committee, commenting on the fact that tow Bronfman companies paid no income tax in 1986—a situation that is unlikely to change under Michael Wilson`s tax reform

Select Bibliography
Index
Penguin Books 1988

Singela homenagem a quem tem a coragem de falar sobre o que se passa em Portugal... ops Canada. Em Portugal nada do que a sra descreve seria impossível... possível (já pareço o sr José, mais pobres...)