Income Don't Trusts

"Federal" finance minister Ralph Goodale has been criticized by the opposition for allowing news on his announcements about income trusts to leak before the announcement was made. People are calling this a scandal.

Unfortunately, people have forgotten the much larger scandal: that the announcement was that income trusts may still exist.

For those of you unclear on what an income trust is, let me describe it: it is a Pyramid Scheme. No, not the written-on-papyrus blueprints used by the Ancient Egyptians. Rather, it is the type of pyramid scheme where you sell something through an ever-widening web of salespeople on the promise that the next seller will be able to resell it at an increased price. Another good example would be those ladies who sold plastic containers to their friends in the 1980s, containers which, now warped and lidless, fill the cupboards of our nation's college students.

However, instead of plastic bowls, which at least have the utility of holding cereal, income trusts pass on the promise of tax avoidance. Instead of building a company, which pays tax, create a trust, which pays no tax. Then the trust pays all its revenue to another trust, which pays no tax, which pays all its revenue to a pension fund, which pays no tax...

If the Bloc québécois de l'Ontario was in power, it would have banned these Ponzi schemes, and this whole scandal would never have arisen. We promise clean government.