Yeah, to be fair, you were completely wrong.
Thanks for the solid reference. This proves both of our points about peoples ability to separate fact from BS perfectly.
First, your claim is illogical. Cutting the corporate tax rate is what eliminates the need for off shore tax havens. Raising tax rates under the liberals is what incentives offshoring of capital.
But Let's dig in. I took your advice and looked it up myself. From the source you provided in the first line:
So $12 billion. Not $199 Billion.
Now because you are a smart guy, and read the whole article, why not dig a little digger and check their facts. When someone hot links something as an attempt to show a reference, click the link and see where it goes. Their 'math' is a link to their own website with another story of compiles numbers, that again links to a statscan Cansim table. Interesting, the Cansim table they reference does not include any of the data they claim it does.
The cansim table they link shows foreign investment, of all types. Claiming that all foreign direct investment is done for tax evasions purposes in disingenuous, because in general, Canadian Companies earning profit off of foreign investments must pay taxes on those profits. The fact that Stats Can knows about these investments through CRA data specifically contradicts the claim that this is "Tax evasion". If it was tax evasion, the government wouldn't know about it.
And yet, the faux article goes on to try to make this link by offering a quote from... Dennis Howlett, Executive Director of Canadians for Tax Fairness. Remember, this is a website called "Canadians for Tax Fairness". So in other words, this undated article without identifying any author quotes the head of its own organization as expert in their illogical argument about tax evasion.
If you simply google 199 billion corporate offshore tax havens, like
this you find 6 fringe news sites before you find an actual news story from a real media outlet, the first two of which are unrelated. Eventually you get to a CBC article of the same name, which as it happens is simply a paid placement of a press release where the same Canadians for Tax Fairness submitted their article to the CBC and got it published. WHich happens more than you think.
So because attention to details matter, when you look at the
2015 Data that this story relies on, you will note that in the column that shows Canadian investment abroad for Barbados as 71.2 Billion in 2014, you will note that beside the 2014 there is a little P. Wonder what that means? At the bottom of the page it says preliminary. Since its not 2015 any more, you can check to see if that preliminary number was revised. Lets
look. Sure enough, the 71.2 Billion number was revised to 55.8, which means that this outrageous increase in offshore investment in Barbados was actually a decline of 13.5% from 2013.
This entire article was based off preliminary data that hadn't been finalized.
And no analysis is complete without a cross comparison. So lets compare offshore investing under the 3 years of CPC governance to the last three years of Liberal governance.
Based on verified numbers, the increase in foreign investment from 2010 to 2013 was just over 19%. Thank you CPC.
By Comparison, the increase in foreign investment from 2015 to 2018 was 23%. Thank you Liberals.
Coincidentally, the liberals had higher corporate tax rates than the CPC, and subsequently had more money going offshore, which is basically what everyone even passingly familiar with tax policy would have predicted.
So if your plan is to use total foreign investment as a proxy for offshore tax havens in order to slag on the Harper, which is a poor plan that doesn't doesn't even make sense, then it was still worse under Trudeau than under Harper.
To quote
Master Luke Skywalker,
This is how you dispel junk science and fake news. This is how you defeat the policy-based-evidence-making of those who put political agenda in front of honest problem solving. It doesn't take much skill, education or intelligence. Just genuine curiosity, and effort. Reading comprehension helps.
And this is what everyone needs to do more of. More fact checking and thoughtful analysis, less of taking the word of uncredible unverified sources at face value and then regurgitating it to their echo chambers ad nauseum.
PS, if you paid for your education, you should ask for a refund.
