Newsletter

One Comment About Taxation – The Move of the Canadian Federal Budget Cycle to the Fall – Appropriate? Governments don’t like criticism. Understandable. But it’s part of the game. Governments won’t please everyone. But their policies should be transparent, open and subject to scrutiny – especially when those policies reshape how the country’s finances are presented. Over the past…

One Comment About Taxation – The Deceptive Accounting Trick of the Canadian Government to Separate the Federal Budget into an “Operating Budget” and “Capital Budget” In his 1890 anthropological classic – The Golden Bough – Sir James Frazer observed that magic rests on the mistaken belief that human ritual can compel nature to obey. Such a mistaken…

One Comment About Taxation – The Importance of Tax Reform And Improving the Development of Tax Policy One of the things I enjoy is hanging out with tax geeks like me who have a similar passion to see Canada’s tax system improved.    Last week, I attended the Canadian Tax Foundation’s Conference in Toronto on…

One Comment About Taxation –Tax Complexity is a Killer…We Need to Make it Simpler. Dr. Jack Mintz recently wrote an article on tax complexity and suggested that if the federal government wants to cut public spending, they should put some focus on tax simplification. He further stated that tax complexity is an economic growth killer that we could…

One Comment About Taxation – So, We’re Finally Going to Have a Federal Budget!  What Can We Expect? Well, it looks like we’re finally going to have a federal budget.  Not in October as originally thought but even later on November 4, 2025. PM Carney stated in the House of Commons that he is “looking…

  One Comment About Taxation – Reducing Tax Complexity Requires a Hard Look at Reducing Redundancy – The T1135 (Foreign Reporting Form) is a Good Example Building a good tax system is not easy. The Scottish economist, Adam Smith, in his 1776 landmark book, The Wealth of Nations, laid out that a good tax system should…

  One Comment About Taxation – The “100-Day Plan” For Improvements to the CRA Call Centers – Is This All Politics?  My Suggestions For Improvements On September 2, 2025, Finance and National Revenue Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne released a statement on his X account acknowledging concerns about the Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) service standards.   The statement included…

  One Comment About Taxation – An “Empty Rooms” Tax in Australia? Taxation Powers Deployed by Government Need Much More Careful Thought   Governments around the world struggle with basic financial mathematics. In other words, many spend much more than they receive. Unlike individual households who cannot continue to run cash deficits indefinitely – since…

  One Comment About Taxation – It’s Time For Canada to Reconsider Having Fixed Budget Release Dates   It has been 497 days since Canada last had a federal budget. That is unacceptable. Budgets are the primary tool by which governments seek Parliament’s approval for taxation and spending. Yet Canadians have been left in the…

  One Comment About Taxation – It’s Time to Codify How Proposed Tax Legislation is Administered Before it Becomes Law   In recent years, we’ve seen a lot of issues regarding the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)’s administrative policy that enables them to administer proposed tax law retroactive to the proposed effective date.  The most egregious…