The taxman versus the charity, and vice versa
OttawaSun.com – News/Canada
September 09, 2016. By MARK BONOKOSKI, Postmedia Network
OTTAWA — Atop the website of Canada Without Poverty, a charity that just launched a constitutional challenge against Canada’s revenuers for restricting its political activities, there are a number of motivational quotes.
They are meant to help pry charitable dollars from your pocket and, in return, you get a good feeling and a charitable tax receipt to submit to the Canada Revenue Agency.
Arguably the best quote on Canada Without Poverty’s home page is credited to writer Eli Khamarov, and it reads as follows: “Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn’t commit.”
Whoever wrote it is brilliant, but it wasn’t Eli Khamarov.
He doesn’t exist. He’s a figment of a student group’s imagination who, despite never having existed, is quoted on many sites that mine the literary world for great quotations.
Another Khamarov quote: “The best things in life are unexpected because there were no expectations.”
There is little doubt the CRA’s audit of Canada Without Poverty was equally unexpected but, once it had concluded, the tax folk declared the charity was too politically active to be considered a true charity, and that its propaganda wing far exceeded the 10% it was legally allowed to spend on trumpeting a political message.
What the CRA’s auditors found, instead, was that Canada Without Poverty was devoting a fulsome 98.5% of its financial resources to politically partisan activity.
It wasn’t even close to the 10% allowed.
This is a no-no – a no-no that allegedly missed the mark by a whopping 88.5%, and therefore difficult not to notice.
Naturally the blame can be laid squarely on the dreaded Conservative government of Stephen Harper when, in 2012, it launched an $8-million program — since inflated to $13 million — to have the CRA investigate what turned out to be 60 charities suspected of using their status as a front for doing the strictly forbidden.
Like publicly endorsing specific candidates or parties, and overspending the 10% limit on lobbying for reform of specific laws and/or policies.
Who doesn’t hate poverty? But what donor, regardless of political stripe, wants his or her charitable donation going almost wholly to fighting politicians rather than fighting poverty?
This is what was ticking off the Harperites, and rightfully so. True charity is one thing, but taking in charitable money as a guise to political activity, and issuing a tax receipt that rips off all taxpayers, is quite another.
Canada Without Poverty’s court challenge, to be argued pro bono by the law firm McCarthy Tetrault LLP, contends that the CRA’s restrictions violates a Charter section that guarantees both freedom of expression and freedom of association.
McCarthy Tetrault is heavy artillery. It has been one of Canada’s leading law practices since 1855, thereby pre-dating Confederation.
But taking on the taxman requires big guns.
As Mark Twain once said, and who unlike Eli Khamarov did actually exist as Samuel Clemens: “The only difference between a taxman and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.”
< http://www.ottawasun.com/2016/09/09/the-taxman-versus-the-charity-and-vice-versa >
Tags: budget, economy, Health, ideology, participation, poverty, rights, tax
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