The Lawyers Weekly - November 19, 2010

THE LAWYERS WEEKLY
November 19, 2010 | 21

BUSINESS
CAREERS

Canadians must enjoy being taxed. Why else would we placidly tolerate a tax regime that is so mind numbingly complex, incomprehensible and expensive?

The Income Tax Act is the largest and most complicated statute in Canadian law. The sheer volume of legislation (expanded and amended annually), regulations, changing administrative practices, new treaties and judicial decisions means that no single person can ever expect to fully understand the entire tax law in one lifetime.

We are at a critical junction. Individuals who do not have even the remotest understanding of tax law must, under threat of civil and criminal sanctions, comply with the fiction that

VERN
KRISHNA

everyone is presumed to know the law. The only way that individuals can comply, as they are required to do in a self-assess-ment system, is by retaining expensive tax professionals.

Lawyers and accountants are necessarily expensive. They too must cope with the complexity, volume and uncertainty of tax law. Without full and detailed diligence, tax professionals are at risk. To insure against this risk, tax lawyers and accountants must spend many hours to capture ever-changing laws. Under the third party advisor

“Individuals cannot be expected to respect a
system that makes them victims of its
incomprehensible language and unintended
consequences. Taxpayers who cannot understand
the law will not comply with it and, if they do, the
costs of monitoring their compliance will increase
substantially.

rules, the minister can assess substantial financial penalties against advisors whom he considers to be culpable in advising their clients. This, in addition to the potential for professional malpractice, virtually guarantees that the cost of professional advice will continue to escalate.

Individuals cannot be
expected to respect a system
that makes them victims of its
incomprehensible language and
unintended consequences. Tax-
payers who cannot understand
the law will not comply with it
and, if they do, the costs of
monitoring their compliance
will increase substantially. We
see the virtual collapse of tax
and financial systems through
tax avoidance in countries such
as Greece, Italy and France.
Canadians are losing faith in
the integrity of their govern-
ment’s tax system. Tax revolts
are not unheard of in history.
Governments need to be vigi-
lant that they retain the confi-
dence of the people.

Brush up on law through theatre

“Brush up your Shakespeare” was the suggestion given by one of the gangsters in the Broadway musical Kiss Me Kate. The advice was that by doing so one could impress the girls.

I go to the theatre to brush up on my law — especially at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. Here’s why.

Law schools love what they call simulations. They don’t really simulate much other than pretending to be a character in an event and wading through extraneous and irrelevant details in a written scenario. The distracting details are a result of a law professor’s creative writing — about the same value as an English professor’s opinions on the law.

I’ve written previously in The Lawyers Weekly about the limitations of simulations. I advocate using real events, especially from the teachers’ or students’ practice. Events can be revealed gradually with teaching moments at each twist and turn. Students can play themselves, harnessing their own real-life and academic experiences. Assuming roles or switching genders and races muddies the waters. That’s best left to acting class, not law school.

Even though most simulations

ALLAN
BONNER

contain too much irrelevant information, some don’t contain enough. Some others can’t contain enough information.

The best example of the latter involves teaching ethics. A popular simulation features a group of law (or ethics) students in a lifeboat or trapped in a cave with only so much air or going down in an aircraft that needs to jettison weight. We’re a diverse lot — gender, somebody’s pregnant, somebody’s in a wheelchair and so on. Who gets to live and who must die?

Here’s where students (now
players) will never have enough
information. What if we let the
young ones live and they have a
pre-existing condition that causes
them to die anyway? What if the
old one has good genes and would
outlive the young one? What about
the one who is destined to discover
a cure for cancer? What if the guy
in the wheelchair is Stephen Hawk-
ing? And on it goes. And it can go
forever in break-out groups in class
— during which time the law school
teacher gets a break from teaching.

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