New Democratic Leader Jack Layton holds a news conference in Ottawa on Nov. 23, 2010.Pawel Dwulit/The Canadian Press
Jack Layton is demanding the Harper government crack down on sleazy millionaires who hide their fortunes in offshore tax havens.
"Mr. Harper cannot keep standing by while the wealthy tax cheats and the biggest corporations ... essentially take tax dollars out of the pockets of hard-working Canadians," the NDP Leader told reporters Tuesday. "It's not right."
Mr. Layton charged there is a "rash of tax avoidance cases" and that wealthy individuals and corporations are misusing offshore havens "to avoid paying taxes and therefore shortchanging honest tax-paying, hard-working Canadians."
He said Canadians are in the dark about exactly how much Revenue Canada is losing through these schemes. One recent study of the country's five big banks, however, suggested they avoided paying $16-billion in income taxes between 1992 and 2008.
Canadians should know what the real figures are, Mr. Layton asserted. "We really need to empathize here with the average Canadian taxpayer who has to pick up the difference, the average Canadian who is struggling just to get out of the tail end of this recession."
The NDP Leader wants the government be more transparent. He is calling on Ottawa to publish annual estimates of how much it believes is being lost to these offshore tax havens.
In addition, he said the Canadian Revenue Agency should be given teeth to recover this hidden money. He accused the Harper government of cutting the CRA budget by 16 per cent, which is "helping the tax cheats to get away."
And he also wants tougher regulations that would put the onus wealthy tax filers to prove their offshore accounts are legal.
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Update Mr. Layton is using a discredited study to prove his point that Canada's big banks are avoiding paying income taxes, the Canadian Bankers Association says.
Robin Walsh, the CBA's vice president of communications, took exception to comments the NDP Leader made at a press conference Tuesday in which he criticized the government for allowing wealthy Canadians and corporations to get away with hiding their fortunes in secret offshore bank accounts.
Mr. Layton said: "One recent study found that Canada's Big Five banks avoided paying $16-billion in income taxes between 1992 and 2008."
The study in question, according to Mr. Layton's spokesman Karl Belanger, was done by a respected academic at the Université du Québec à Montréal.
Mr. Walsh, however, says that study has been "discredited by leading tax experts."
And he included a report that economist Jack Mintz wrote about the study.
"The facts are that Canada's banks tend to seek growth strategies that include international expansion," Mr. Walsh said. "Some foreign-earned profits and dividends are exempt from taxation in Canada because they have already been taxed elsewhere: otherwise these profits would be taxed twice."