Five things you should know before you start your work day

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Ottawa to crack down on ‘income sprinkling’

The federal government has proposed to crack down on the practice of wealthy individual spreading their income among family members, at lower marginal rates and major tax savings, writes Garry Marr. Ottawa is taking aim at three major loopholes, affecting as many as 50,000 families, including what is called “income sprinkling” using private corporations to shift income from an individual facing a higher personal income tax rate to a family member who is subject to lower personal tax rates or who may not be taxable at all. “Many of the richest Canadians are unfairly exploiting the tax rules designed to help businesses thrive. … We want to make sure those rules are used to do just that, and not to give unfair tax advantages to certain – often high-income – individuals,” Finance Minister Bill Morneau said in a statement.

Trouble for Ontario’s green energy industry

The loss of 340 jobs at a Tillsonburg factory that makes blades for wind turbines could be a harbinger of troubles ahead in Ontario’s green energy industry, a leading analyst says. Siemens Canada said it’s closing one of four Ontario green energy factories set up under a controversial, multi-billion-dollar deal with Korean industrial giant Samsung. Energy analyst Tom Adams said Ontario’s green energy industry could be in for a rough ride if it doesn’t lay its hands on orders from outside Ontario, arguing the provincial market is saturated with wind and solar electricity brought online since the Liberal government plunged headlong into green energy in 2009. “I think it was always pretty obvious that whatever jobs were going to arise from the Green Energy Act were all temporary or almost all temporary,” Adams said. 

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