Canadian Personal Finance Blog

June 14th, 2005

$2.4B Tax Write off?

I read that one in the news yesterday and it really got me riled up. I pay my taxes dutifully every year, and it is a lot (I need to find that web site that tells me when I stop working for the government). They can write off 2.5B$ worth of tax debt? I guess it’s like them claiming bankruptcy? Were these debts uncollectable, or were they just too darn lazy? How do you NOT pay taxes? I am kind of flabbergasted by the whole thing.

Most Canadians pay their bills, hold up their end, the Government claims they don’t have enough money, yet they can abandon getting money? Why not sell the bill collection to someone and try to recoup it that way? This is NOT how to do debt reduction, pay your debts!

Here is the article, from the Ottawa Citizen

–C8j

One Response to “$2.4B Tax Write off?”

cvrk Says:
June 14th, 2005 at 7:21 am

Canada is not alone in such write off! Almost every country has such a system. What is being probably written off, is the amount in dispute. There are possibilities, that Revenue officials may demand an higher amount than the self assessed one, which is disputable. Governments, sometimes, write off such amounts to avoid further waste of manpower. I am not about canadian write off.
In india sometimes we have an amnesty, from tax defaults, providing an opportunity for tax payers who have dodged earlier to bring such amounts and pay taxes at the current rate foregoing the penalty and interst normally levied.
Such system was introduced twice, in the past two decades, and have brought in lot of criticism from honest tax payers.

cvrk Says:
June 14th, 2005 at 7:21 am

Canada is not alone in such write off! Almost every country has such a system. What is being probably written off, is the amount in dispute. There are possibilities, that Revenue officials may demand an higher amount than the self assessed one, which is disputable. Governments, sometimes, write off such amounts to avoid further waste of manpower. I am not about canadian write off.
In india sometimes we have an amnesty, from tax defaults, providing an opportunity for tax payers who have dodged earlier to bring such amounts and pay taxes at the current rate foregoing the penalty and interst normally levied.
Such system was introduced twice, in the past two decades, and have brought in lot of criticism from honest tax payers.