SIGN PETITION: Cameco - Pay Your Taxes!! . . . & More

SIGN PETITION: Cameco - Pay Your Taxes!! . . . & More

Postby Oscar » Wed Jun 22, 2016 3:08 pm

SIGN PETITION: Cameco - Pay Your Taxes!

[ https://community.sumofus.org/petitions ... source=mlt ]

Campaign created by Don Kossick ( 36,948 of 40,000 signatures )

PETITION:

To: Prime Minster of Canada - Justin Trudeau, Premier of Saskatchewan, Brad Wall, and President of Cameco in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

We want Cameco (a major global uranium corporation headquartered in Saskatchewan) to pay up the over 2.1 billion dollars that it owes the people of Canada.

Why is this important?

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just announced a nearly $30-billion deficit in order to pay for badly needed social programs and infrastructure -- and yet here we have Cameco refusing to pay $2.1 billion in back taxes.

Both the Canadian Revenue Agency and the American IRS have gone after Cameco for transferring billions in profits to offshore tax shelters in order to dodge tax on profits made in Canada. But Cameco is refusing to pay.

But there's far more at stake than just the back taxes: if Cameco gets away with this, countless other corporations will try the same thing. We were all disgusted when the CRA offered amnesty to super-rich clients of accounting firm KPMG after they benefitted from a tax avoidance sham. The last thing we want is another closed-door deal that lets those with power and influence off the hook.

Cameco made its profit using Canadian roads and infrastructure, Canadian labour and a stable Canadian business climate in my home province. In fact, Cameco's wealth comes from Northern Saskatchewan, one of the most marginalized areas in Canada that desperately needs better services and community investment.

$2.1 billion is a lot of money. To put it in perspective, providing clean drinking water to every Canadian community -- including the remote First Nations communities right next door to Cameco’s mines -- would cost $470 million. $2.1 billion is enough to start a national pharmacare plan and could give every university student in Canada a break on their tuition.

But Cameco doesn't want to pay its fair share of taxes to the country or people that helped it flourish. Thankfully, these damning business practices are now the subject of global attention. With outrage mounting worldwide on the abuse of tax havens, we have a real opportunity to hold Cameco accountable.

SIGN PETITION:
[ https://community.sumofus.org/petitions ... source=mlt ]

= = = = =

LISTEN: Nuclear Hotseat #259: Oh, Canada! Dr. Gordon Edwards on Canada’s Twisted Nuclear Path
[ https://lockerdome.com/sgtreport/8811318983573012 ]

This Week’s Featured Interview:
◾Dr. Gordon Edwards, president of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility (CCNR) and one of Canada’s best known independent experts on nuclear technology, provides a stunningly thorough history of Canadian involvement with US development of the nuclear bomb, as well as issues involving reactors, uranium mining, accidents and attempted clean-ups, of course the waste storage issue, and more. The first instalment of a massive, multi-episode visit with Dr. Edwards, who weaves individual incidents and factoids into a clear picture of the nuclear world in which Canada and the rest of us live.

Numnutz of the Week:
[ http://nuclearhotseat.com/2016/06/08/nu ... lear-path/ ]
The United States doesn’t know what to do with the 75,000 tons of high-level radioactive nuclear waste from domestic nuclear reactors that’s accumulated over the last 70 years… but that doesn’t stop our country from calling back 331 kilograms of plutonium it loaned to Japan and plunking it down in South Carolina’s Savannah River Site and the ever-porous, unsecured “security” at the Y-12 site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Oscar
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Re: SIGN PETITION: Cameco - Pay Your Taxes!! . . . & More

Postby Oscar » Fri Oct 28, 2016 10:40 am

Dear CRA: Don't let Cameco get away with its $2.2-billion tax evasion

[ http://rabble.ca/columnists/2016/10/dea ... ax-evasion ]

By Murray Dobbin | October 28, 2016

Cameco, the Saskatchewan-based uranium mining colossus, is currently in Federal Court facing charges by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) that it illegally avoided a stunning $2.2 billion in Canadian income taxes. It is not only the largest such case in Canadian history but one of the most shameless tax dodges ever hatched by a Canadian corporation. The court case has been delayed for years and just the fact that it has finally made it before a judge is good news. But the news could quickly turn bad if, facing defeat, Cameco makes a pitch to settle for less than the full amount. That would be a miscarriage of justice.

It is absolutely critical that the government not make a deal with Cameco for a smaller sum -- as often happens in these cases. Because this is no ordinary case. Cameco is a rogue corporation, contemptuous of the country it operates in, and so arrogant in its tax avoidance scheme that it can't even bother to try to justify it. Confronted by the facts, Cameco just repeats its executive mantra: "We believe that it was established in accordance with sound business principles and in accordance with relevant laws and regulations."

At a time when more and more attention is being paid to off-shore tax havens and the billions we lose to them, Canada needs to make an example of this irresponsible corporate "citizen."

How Cameco avoids taxes

Here's the bare bones of the scheme. In 1999 Cameco decided to dramatically reduce its income tax bill by setting up a subsidiary in Zug, Switzerland, where the tax rate is 10 per cent -- compared to the (then) Canadian rate of about 27 per cent. At the time the price was at rock bottom -- $10 a pound. That's the price the Saskatchewan head office charged its Swiss "subsidiary." Then came the windfall manoeuvre: Cameco drafted a 17-year uranium supply agreement at a fixed price of $10 a pound. It was simplicity itself: Cameco would sell literally all of its uranium through the Swiss subsidiary and it would sell it for whatever the world price was. That world price went to almost $140 a pound in 2007 and is now around $35. All the revenue earned above $10 a pound was taxed in Switzerland at the low rate. (An insignificant amount is actually sold in Europe and, of course, not an ounce of the stuff ever finds its way to Zug.)

This scheme is known as "transfer pricing" and sometimes it is perfectly legitimate -- companies that sell their products in multiple countries "sell" them to subsidiaries which then sell them in their jurisdiction and get taxed on the profits. But more and more multinationals have been abusing the law that allows this -- including Apple, "based" in Ireland, which is now facing a US$15-billion tax bill from the European Commission for its abuse of transfer pricing. [ http://www.forbes.com/sites/francescopp ... 35138e9d97 ]

But Apple actually sold its products in European countries and has 5,500 employees in Ireland. Cameco? Not so much. According to a 2014 Globe and Mail story: [ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-in ... e18989010/ ]

"While Cameco says Cameco Europe has its own board of directors and a full-time CEO, documents in the case reveal the European company had no other full-time employees, and no stand-alone office, instead renting space from the law firm performing its legal work."

Virtually all the substantive work was performed in Canada.

All of the uranium is mined in Canada, all of Cameco's sales are negotiated and completed in Canada, and literally all of its profits are generated in Canada. The company's scheme is pure scam which is why fair-tax activists in Saskatchewan call the company Scameco. A citizens' group, Saskatchewan Citizens for Tax Fairness, has been on Cameco's case for several years -- paying for a billboard demanding Cameco pay up and collecting 36,000 names on a petition which it presented to the federal government.

Growing suspicion

MORE:

[ http://rabble.ca/columnists/2016/10/dea ... ax-evasion ]
Oscar
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Joined: Wed May 03, 2006 3:23 pm


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