Lawyers unhappy with CBA over tax stance
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The Canadian Bar Association’s decision to join with other small business groups in protesting the federal government’s planned changes to private incorporation tax rules has some lawyers revoking their membership in protest, saying that it’s not something they should be fighting against.
“I don’t feel like I was adequately consulted before they took this position,” says Chris Rudnicki, partner with Rusonik O’Connor Robbins Ross Gorham & Angelini LLP in Toronto.
Rudnicki says he has a considered opinion on the issue of the proposed changes, and he was taken aback that his association would have taken a position without getting feedback.
“Lawyers are a tremendously privileged section of our society,” he says.
“We make some of the highest incomes of any profession, especially the kinds of lawyers who tend to be in charge of our national organizations like the CBA.”
The proposed changes announced by the federal government in July affect Canadian Controlled Private Corporations and are intended to: end the practice of “income sprinkling,” where dividends are paid to adult children or other family members at a significant tax advantage; address passive income by removing the tax advantage for using a private corporation for investment purposes; and clamp down on transforming dividend income into capital gains, which are more lightly taxed.
The stated intention from the government is to restore the neutrality between saving inside of a corporation and outside of one.
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