The House of Commons finance committee rebooted a long-dormant probe into Isle of Man shell companies last month after CBC/Radio-Canada reported on suspicious money transfers unrelated to the Coopers.ĭuring hearings into the KPMG Isle of Man companies back in 2016, the Liberal chair of the finance committee abruptly blocked testimony - before MPs were able to know how much money the government might have lost in revenue or the names of all the KPMG clients behind those shell companies. The Coopers are "just the tip of the iceberg," said Dennis Howlett, the former head of Canadians for Tax Fairness, a group that advocates against offshore tax secrecy.
The scheme involved at least 25 well-heeled Canadians. In 2015, Marshall Cooper said KPMG approached his family to sign up for the tax dodge, and that questions should be directed towards the accounting firm. The CRA declared in 2016 it would be scrutinizing all money transfers over $10,000 to the British Crown dependency. Through their lawyer, the Cooper family declined to comment.īeachgoers walk along a tidal causeway in the Isle of Man. A client would purport to give away their wealth to one of the shell companies and then get back regular tax-free "gifts" from income earned when the money was invested abroad. The KPMG scheme involved setting up shell companies for Canadian multimillionaires and billionaires in the Isle of Man, a British crown dependency in the Irish Sea. Unreported documents obtained by the CBC's The Fifth Estate and Radio-Canada's Enquête show that even after it was discovered they were using KPMG's offshore tax dodge, Peter Cooper and his sons continued using the scheme, which Canada Revenue Agency auditors had called a "sham" that involved "deception." Instead, in December 2001, Peter and his sons signed up for a massive offshore tax dodge designed and run by the Canadian accounting firm KPMG and paid virtually no income tax for more than a decade, according to documents filed in the Federal Court of Canada and the Tax Court of Canada. They settled in Victoria, purchased luxurious homes and became permanent residents - qualifying for Canadian health care and other social services.īut that also meant they would eventually have to start paying tax on their investment income from $25 million in offshore accounts. After amassing a fortune selling scrap metal in South Africa, Peter Cooper immigrated to Canada in the mid-1990s with his sons Marshall and Richard and their families.
0 kommentar(er)
