Tax Secrecy and Tax Transparency – The Relevance of Confidentiality in Tax Law Country Report: Canada

Abstract

Canadian National Report prepared for the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Conference on tax secrecy and transparency, Rust, Austria, July, 2012. The aim of the project is to assess how different countries regard the treatment of tax information and tax secrecy. Topics include the collection of data, the sharing of information domestically and internationally, interaction of tax rules with related regulatory rules, and access to taxpayer information by the public. This report discusses Canada's relatively low profile in the global market for offshore financial services. Overall, Canada’s tax regime attempts to strike a balance between protecting taxpayer rights to privacy and confidentiality, and ensuring that the government has sufficient information about taxpayers in order to enforce its own laws, as well as to cooperate with efforts by other countries to enforce their tax laws in respect of their residents who invest in Canada.

Keywords: taxation, secrecy, transparency, financial sector, multinational, corporate law, disclosure, confidentiality, privacy, tax administration, FOIA, information sharing

JEL Classification: D8, D82, F23, L71, L72, K22, E62, H2, H23, H25, H26, K33, K34, A13, D7, D71, D73, D78, M1, M14