52 comments on Income Trusts and the Canadian Energy Sector
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52 comments on Income Trusts and the Canadian Energy Sector
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Not by any normal definition of the word "retroactive" it isn't.
Enacting a tax means it applies to future revenue.
Enacting a retroactive tax means it applies to future and past revenue.
If the new tax was applied to income trusts starting in 2005, then it would be retroactive. It doesn't, so it isn't; it's just a normal tax, much like any other tax. It may or may not be a bad tax, but calling it "retroactive" seems like little more than misleading rhetorical hyperbole.
"You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes
retroactive
adj
taking effect from a date in the past
No it bloody well isn't. Of course expectations of future cash flow are a part of current valuations. When conditions change the current valuation changes. The government's (proposed) changes affect current values, but they do not affect anything that happened in the past. They just don't. It is not retroactive.
Or perhaps when a trust announces a change in the distribution to be paid in the next month that is a "retroactive" change? When the prime interest rate changes that is a "retroactive" change applied to all bonds?
Whether the change was right or not is irrelevant to this question. The law is not "retroactive in its effects". Arguing it is, and placing such an absurd statement right in the title of the article, discredits it. If you can't see that, then... well, that is enough, I shall say no more.