The petition
To the Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, Minister of Revenue, Members of parliament of all parties
We, the undersigned, are shocked to learn that the government is taxing people on paper income they never in reality made, a.k.a. phantom income.
We understand that this happens as a result of legislation that treats the benefit of acquiring shares through an employee stock option or stock purchase program as an employment benefit yet the loss of selling these same shares as a capital loss which cannot be used to offset the employment benefit.
Thus, people are facing a heavy tax burden on the employment benefit, which they cannot pay as they never actually received any money from that assessed benefit. People's financial and emotional lives have been severely impacted and in some cases ruined by this tax on phantom income. We personally know or are aware of people who have been thus affected.
As fair-minded Canadians, we believe that it was never the intent of the law to create this terrible situation.
We ask that the minister of finance quickly introduces and that all parties support a change to the law to fix this problem. One possible way is to allow the capital loss on the shares to be used to offset the paper employment benefit. There are many other approaches. This change needs to be retroactive to address those already affected.
Canada has a reputation as a fair and balanced country. We hope our parliament will demonstrate this by quickly dealing with this issue.
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