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Article: Policy Forum: Comments on Income Trusts
- Article from:
- Canadian Tax Journal
- Article date:
- May 1, 2004
CopyrightCopyright 2004 Canadian Tax Journal. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Within a relatively short period, business income trusts have
become a well-established sector of Canadian capital markets. In 2002
they accounted for 87 percent of all initial public offerings; by
April 2004, by some estimates, they had a market capitalization of
close to $80 billion, or about 10 percent of the market
capitalization of the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Over the past two years, there has been an intense public policy
debate about whether income trust transactions are being undertaken
primarily because of their favourable tax treatment (arguably, they
allow for the corporate-tax-free distribution of corporate profits by
reducing the costs of high debt-to-equity ratios), whether ...