Jim Flaherty´s Scary Halloween Trick

Edited by Vince Imerti

Just as little trick or treaters were heading out to try their luck on Halloween evening, Jim Flaherty performed an unexpected trick of his own – he announced the wholesale overhaul of Canada's income and royalty trust market. He tagged publicly traded partnerships for good measure since if that avenue were not closed off, many corporations and trusts could restructure themselves as partnerships and continue the tax saving game. We will refer to affected trusts and partnerships using the Government's catchy new acronym – SIFT – "specified investment flow-through". And we note as an aside that whenever a government official goes out of his way to tell us that something is "fair", we can't help but speculate as to which heads will soon be rolling around on the floor.