Canadians for Tax Fairness

The federal government is letting large foreign corporations such as Google, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook, Uber and others off the hook on paying taxes on digital products and services in Canada.

The steps the federal and provincial governments are making are important, the measures are not clear and robust enough to effectively combat money laundering, tax evasion and other crimes.

Canadians for Tax Fairness has submitted a brief to the House of Commons Finance Committee for their Pre-Budget Consultations that identified some ways the government could raise over $23 billion.

The small but very vocal misinformation campaign threatens to scare the government out of taking this modest, but important step towards building a fairer tax system. Speak up for fairness.

A report shows federal government is awarding contracts to suppliers who avoid paying their share of taxes by using tax havens, including individuals and organizations named in the Panama Papers.

Tax advisers around the world are touting shell companies in Canada to help mask a client's assets and business dealings.

National civil society groups have joined Canadians for Tax Fairness, and joined international efforts, to step up its fight against the global tax avoidance epidemic by pushing for strong UN action.

Apple has more than $215 billion in profits stashed offshore. Some of that money was made in Canada.

Canada's Revenue Minister promised to use the leaked documents to launch audits and go after possible tax cheats. So, has anything changed?

Jeff Bezos isn't just the owner of Amazon. He also owns the Washington Post, he's worth $50 billion, he even advises the Pentagon. But according to the IRS he owes $1.5 billion in unpaid taxes.

Cameco is a multi-billion dollar Canadian company. They mine Canadian uranium. But they only pay 10% corporate taxes in Zug, Switzerland. Sign the petition and demand Cameco pay up.

Of all Canada's government departments, the Canada Revenue Agency has been the absolute worst at deleting records -- far after the time it is is supposed to dispose of records by law.

It turns out the CRA pays rent to a serial tax haven user for offices in Edmonton, Montreal and Calgary. Larco Investments hates taxes but loves the $74.3 million it gets from the feds in rent.

In the span of a single year, CAD $40 billion flowed to the top 10 tax havens –- an all-time high. Tax havens now hold at least $270 billion of Canadian corporate money, mostly untaxed.

An anonymous source, 11 million leaked documents, and a year-long investigation effort by 400 journalists in over 80 countries have yielded the Panama Papers, an unprecedented look at tax havens.

The Liberal government has caved on the campaign promise to close the stock option loophole. Too bad, because it costs Canada $1 billion a year and Canadians definitely don't get their money's worth.

Their bosses didn't listen when CRA staff argued that they should pursue a criminal investigation or at least impose large penalties on KPMG clients caught using an offshore tax-avoidance scheme.

We've let the principles of fair taxation slide. Tax-dodging has become commonplace because of staff cuts and under-capacity at the CRA and not taking serious action to counter tax havens.

It is estimated that there is $199 billion of Canadian money offshore. It is likely much higher. That translates into at least $8 billion of lost tax revenue each and every year.

Justin Trudeau will be at the opening of the new Google development team headquarters. But will he take a moment to pull Google executives aside and ask them to pay their fair share of federal taxes?

Canada is bleeding money because our tax system hasn't caught up to twenty-first century practices. An overhaul is long overdue.

Before memories fade of Harper and this awful ordeal, there are some critical house-cleaning items to take care of.