Laws to stop tax cheats need teeth

Re Expose tax cheats, Editorial June 28 Your ongoing Panama Papers series on tax cheating is most informative, as well as anger-provoking over the massive robbery of the public purse for decades, and, in one respect at least, puzzling.

My confusion is that there seems to be two forms of theft involved: legal tax avoidance, made possible and encouraged — as you’ve reported — by government tax legislation, dating back decades, that leaves vast loopholes through which the very rich can drive truckloads of money into offshore tax havens, thus avoiding their fair share of taxes at home; and then there is tax evasion, which has always been illegal. If there is a clear dividing line between legal avoidance and illegal evasion, I have seen nothing in your articles to explain it. In fact you’ve even lumped the two together as “tax dodging,” which further muddies the waters.

Does Ottawa intend to pursue avoiders or evaders — or both? Clearly, they can’t go after the former unless they change our laws to make “avoidance” illegal. But, as Marco Chown Oved reported on June 17, after eight months in office, the Trudeau government, despite election campaign promises, “has done nothing to stanch the bleeding” that its predecessors made legally possible.

I’ve seen estimates as high as $31 trillion for the worldwide total stashed in tax havens by corporations and the 1 per cent But, as your editorial notes, Ottawa has only “named and shamed . . . dozens of smalltime offenders . . . who have merely fallen behind on their tax payments.” The really big cheaters, even if caught, can apparently cut themselves a deal and stay anonymous under our laws.

We need tough new laws to ensure that everybody pays their fair share toward the building and maintenance of the strong public sector without which no democracy can survive. I’ll believe the government is serious about this when at least some rich corporations and individuals, who have for years defrauded the country that made them wealthy, are named, required to pay it all back, heavily fined and deposited in their rightful onshore residence — behind bars. Meantime, talk is just talk, and our health, education and infrastructure needs remain woefully underfunded. Terry O’Connor, Toronto