The other day, I shared a post from Gad Saad that alerted me to something I’d never heard of before: a steep tax the federal and provincial governments levy when a Canadian emigrates to another country:
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Vesper provides more information:
The Great Scam
After what @GadSaad posted yesterday, something I had no idea existed … an “Exit Tax” I did some digging. This is what I found.
Canada’s departure tax is one of the biggest scam taxes on the books. Apparently when you leave the country, the government treats you as if you sold every investment you own, even if you sold nothing.
You get hit with a tax bill on money you never touched, never withdrew, never spent. They literally invented a fake sale to justify taking your money.
Here’s what makes it even worse. The stocks they’re taxing? Those are foreign companies. Apple, Samsung, whatever you hold, those grew because of what those businesses did in their own countries, their own markets, with their own workers.
Canada had absolutely nothing to do with it. Zero. But they still want a cut just because you happened to live here while you owned them. They did nothing and still want to be paid like they did.
And before 1996 this didn’t even exist the way it does now. Chrétien’s government expanded it that year and buried it in section 128.1(4)(b) of the Income Tax Act like they hoped nobody would notice. Italy doesn’t do this. Portugal doesn’t. Belgium, Switzerland, the UK, none of them pull this shit.
You paid income tax every year. You paid sales tax. Property tax. You held up your end of the deal the whole damn time. And when you decide to go live somewhere else, they hit you with a bill for money that was never real to begin with.
Canada under any Liberal is a Scam!
And followed up with:
FYI- Just to make clear why I posted that image instead of Clause 17 it was meant to make an additional point, that I’m not sure Gad was informed about. The system is one-directional and rigged.
That image explains that The exit tax locks in your gains the day you leave at whatever the market says that day. You have no choice, no timing, no flexibility.
If your portfolio drops 30% the week after you leave, too bad. Canada already took their cut on the higher number. The gain was real to them the moment you packed your bags. The loss that came after is entirely your problem.
If you want to see the stocks section it’s this
You can read it for yourself:
Update: After some online mockery, Gad Saad explains that he’s not just upset on his own behalf.
People are astoundingly stupid. My comments about the departure tax is not that I should be treated differently from anyone else. I am making a point about the extent to which taxes are confiscatory. As I have previously explained, there was a time when ZERO cents of income tax were levied in Canada and the US. Then bit by bit, that “temporary” measure, to be applied to only a few, and at a very low percentage rate of your income, becomes a mammoth monster that takes more than 50% of your earnings. It can occur because there are no repercussions if governments do not balance their budgets (other than voting them out). Hence, what starts off as a small temporary tax on a few becomes an existential theft that is orders of magnitude larger than the so-called illegal extortion tax of the Mafia. It can exist only because the great majority of people BENEFIT from this form of parasitic taxation. But someone has to pay for everyone else, and when you are that someone, you are not necessarily pleased to be funding the ultimate Ponzi scheme. I’m making a moral, philosophical, and ethical argument. It’s not just about me.
