Garth Turner Gives Income Trust Tax a Big Thumbs Down

Tory dissident Garth Turner offers his 2 cents on the now infamous Turner Report Blog:

On Wednesday several billion dollars in investors' money evaporated as the TSX took a 300-point dive and income trusts collapsed more than 10%. I sat there in QP and watched emails slide by on my Berry from people who had lost $80,000 or $100,000 by three in the afternoon. Then I looked up at my former colleagues leaping to their feet, yelping, and giving Jim a standing ovation after answering a Liberal attack. How callous and uncaring did that look? How mindlessly partisan? Can you blame taxpayers for thinking we all go mental when we arrive here?

How would Garth have done things differently?

So, I think the minister of finance could have declared a moratorium on new conversions, struck a blue ribbon panel to study the industry and eased in regs over the past few months making it crystal what direction the feds were going in. That would have allowed for a more orderly, less panicked correction, and kept from scaring the crap out of a few million seniors.

I really don't know enough about Income Trusts to judge the government on this issue. However, a couple of fellow office drones "took it up the ass" (in the words of one) yesterday, to the tune of $100s apiece. So the effects of this move may reach further up and down the economic scale than people think. And I don't know how many of the folks whose money went poof! on them will be content with the argument that "it had to be done".

Interestingly enough, a fellow on CBC this morning claimed that many investors probably came out ahead in the end, given the upside market moves that occurred when the Tories made their original "no tax" pledge.