Tax havens: the PQ calls for laws with more teeth

Archival Photo Simon Clark
The mp of the parti québecois and critical in the field of Finance, Nicolas Marceau

Pierre Couture

Tuesday, 6 February 2018 19:30

UPDATE
Tuesday, February 6, 2018 19:39

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The Parti québécois (PQ) does not believe that current laws provide enough ammunition to Revenu Québec in order to recover a good part of the $ 700 million that result annually in tax havens.

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“As long as we don’t change the laws, it will continue “, said Tuesday the deputy of the parti québecois and critical in the field of Finance, Nicolas Marceau.

According to the latter, the existing laws and regulations are timid compared to the objectives of the government Couillard to actually attack the problems of tax havens in Quebec.

Easy to work around

“Tax avoidance takes place because it is easy to do. There is evidence that a significant number of our companies are already present, and in a legal manner into tax havens, ” said the former minister of Finance of Québec.

The online business would lose in tax quebeckers more than $ 270 million annually, according to the ministry of Finance.

The web giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, eBay and others that carry out online sales in Quebec and who do not charge the sales tax are losing a lot of money to Quebec, while creating an inequity in tax to other retailers.

The Parti québécois maintains that the introduction of a tax on the profits diverted would encourage the big players in online commerce to pay their taxes here rather than in the discharge of this new form of taxation at a much higher rate.

In Australia, this tax measure would allow the federal government of the country to recover 100 million australian dollars (a little less than 99 million canadian dollars), as early as next year.

Lower taxes

The Parti québécois also proposes to reduce the rate of taxation on all products sold in the country, and that the products in the e-commerce are taxed at the same rate.

Thus, in spite of the taxation of the products in the line, the Canadians would bear the same tax burden as before, and the revenues of the State would be the same, said Mr. Marceau.

The rate of the QST and the GST would be reduced as a function of the weight of online commerce, so that this measure would be at zero cost, stated the mp of the Parti québécois.