journal features

taxing expat Canadians

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Tokyo, 2010.03.12

There's a movement in certain conservative circles in Canada to introduce taxation on the global income of expatriate Canadians.

I'm not against it, to tell you the truth. Especially if it will cause an improved sense of what it means to hold a Canadian passport for the 2.7 million Canadians who live abroad.

But I don't like the way that the matter is being handled by those conservative supporters of the concept. They seem to be painting us as a bunch of tax dodgers and crooks. I've got a fair bit to say on the subject, and I wrote it all in an article on taxing expat Canadians.

rand()m quote

Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

—T.S. Eliot