Canada Revenue Agency to Tax all Contest Winners of Tim Hortons Free Coffee

Tim Hortons-FNT-small.pngOTTAWA – A leaked document from the Canada Revenue Agency shows that a 2017 tax code change will allow for taxing all past and future winners of free coffee in the Tim Hortons RRRoll Up The Rim To Win contest. The document also noted that the CRA will be hiring thirty thousand additional employees before the end of 2017, to enforce the new tax code.

This latest revelation came fast upon the heels of the CRA’s most recent bureaucratic slight-of-hand to separate retail employees from a long-established and financially negligible perquisite, by assessing discounted merchandize as a taxable benefit.

A spokesperson for the national revenue minister, who did not want to go on the record, explained that the reason the government was potentially spending billions of extra tax dollars in costs to extract a pittance in tax revenue from the lowest paid workers in the Canadian business sector was: “because we can.” And when FauxNews Today asked if a discounted purchase of second-hand pajama bottoms by a part-time employee of a goodwill store would count as a taxable benefit, the phone suddenly went to dial tone.

A spokesperson who was reached within the CRA was more forthcoming, although he also declined to give his name for the record, citing “privacy concerns.” He explained the reason why thirty-thousand additional CRA employees were hired to collect taxes from Tim Hortons contest winners.

“We know that Tim Hortons gives out more than thirty-thousand prizes in its RRRoll Up The Rim contest every year. So one CRA employee will be assigned to shadow each contest winner to ensure that anyone who wins a free cup of coffee will be certain to report it on his tax form.”

The CRA spokesperson was candid about why the agency consistently focused on such trivial and inconsequential sources of tax revenue when there was so much more to be gained by applying tax code changes to hugely profitable corporations like the Canadian banks.

“Banks have lawyers,” he said. “They put up a fight, use every loophole in the book and some that are not in the book. That’s costly and it might take decades to collect from them, if ever. The average docile Canadian citizen just lays down with no fuss and lets us empty out their pockets year after year.”

The CRA spokesperson was also asked if there was a specific rationale for the changes to the 2017 tax code.

“It’s simple,” he said. “We want the money. The CRA looks at the Canadian population as an orchard, ripe for the picking. And when we go out to harvest it, the first thing we pluck is the low hanging fruit.”  Source: FNT Staff

Photo credit: Original images at: The30.ca, Tim Hortons

 

Ottawa Bureaucrats Tussle with Province Over Speed Limits for Hot Air Balloons

Hot Air Balloons-FNT-WebOTTAWA – After three weeks of intense negotiation over jurisdictional and other issues for legislating speed limits for hot air balloons, nothing has been settled between the City of Ottawa and the Province of Ontario.

“I think we’re making real progress,” said Fred MacKenzie, a Program Manager for the City’s traffic division, “we’ve finally agreed on the upper and lower speed limits.”

A spokesperson for the Province, Eugene Vaillencourt, was quick to counter this assessment however. “We’ve agreed on nothing of the sort,” he scoffed. “I mean the lower speed limit, yes, a quarter of a kilometer per hour is fine, or the balloons would simply fall out of the sky.  But a hundred and sixty kph at the top end is far too high to set the maximum. That would only apply in hurricane season, and such.”

The negotiations were also set back when a representative from Transport Canada, who arrived late to the meeting, suggested that the regulating standard should be set in knots, not kph.

As the all-day session finally ground down and broke up late Friday afternoon and all parties headed off for the weekend, MacKenzie was caught by a reporter in an unguarded remark he made at a Tim Hortons near City Hall.

“It’s not about the speeds at all,” he grumbled. “It’s about who gets to collect the fines. In the end it’s always just about the money!”   Source: FNT Staff