Blacklock’s- Creeping Black Market
The underground economy now comprises a third of the Canadian trucking industry, the Commons finance committee was told yesterday.
Wood said a 2022 Department of Employment spot check on scofflaws in Ontario alone “found gross non-compliance with more than 60 percent of employers” in contravention of labour codes.
Audits by the Canada Revenue Agency also identified widespread tax evasion, said Wood.
Yes, taxes are punitive, and the trucking industry is over-regulated, but some of the issues are cultural. Driving was an easy job for “New Canadians” to get into, with lower barriers to entry than other businesses. There are a lot of ways to cheat the system in trucking that can’t be done in a brick and mortar store. Running recaps on steer tires, ignoring hours of service, using dyed fuel, even cloning truck license plates and insurance documentation so 2 trucks can work for the administrative expense of one, there’s a million scams. But I’ve only see one type of people running them. Ultimately, rules only affect people that agree to abide by them, and I know a bunch of honest operators that exited the industry when they could no longer compete with guys that were blatantly cheating.
Instead of exiting the industry they should have cheated too. In other words, they should have said f+ck the rules and f+ck the regulations.
Except we have morals and ethics and integrity….
When the government is immoral, are you still obliged to abide by their immoral laws? It is not an easy question to answer.
“Except we have morals and ethics and integrity….”
Then you have already lost the battle against those that don’t. You do realize you are at war with government oppressors and invaders from shithole countries.
Regulations are racist
yeah no shit, thanks to the CTA and STA’s gross cooperation with government.
What did the cuckolds expect would happen ?
“Creeping Black Market” for the win!
Here, here. I’m a firm believer in f+ck the authorities.
Isn’t the trucking industry pretty much overrun with South Asians? Those cats wrote the book on gaming the system…so I’m not too surprised by this news.
Very much so. i have a friend who owns a truck service center, and he tells me about the “6 pak” tractors from mainly Ontario. i asked him what he meant, and he said there are tractors with 4 drivers and a couple helpers all living in the sleeper, and the truck turns tires 24 hours a day. 6 people is easy to translate, I’ll leave the Pak to your imagination.
you mean the soft hat crowd like Gagmeat??
I call BS. Underground economy typically involves only goods and services sold directly to consumers who can’t write off expenses. Trucking is probably providing services to other businesses 99% of the time. What is income to one is a deductible expense to another. A business that pays cash for trucking is going to have a serious talk with Canada Revenue Agency convincing them that cash for trucking never went into his own pocket.
The main business in the underground economy is home renovations/home repairs where someone gives an obviously good price for cash. It isn’t nickles and dimes. The amount of saving makes a difference. In a gas station I was behind the owner in line to pay for a fill. He was worth maybe $10 million. I asked him why he paid for gas in his own gas station. He said that if he starts taking stuff without paying for it, others may get the same idea. He may very well have written off the gas as a business expense but he wanted everything accounted for.
They pay cash of $100 but get a receipt for $150 from a wholly fictitious trucking company, or using a forged receipt from a real trucking company etc. etc.
The guy who hired the scofflaw trucker is pretty safe because he has paper and actually moved goods from A to B and will show a bank withdrawal of $150 on the day of alleged payment. He’ll give a cell phone number to the feds who will find it was a burner.
The feds are way too slow, lazy and stupid to catch them.
Cheating a government that cheats you is a crime but it is NOT immoral.
They aren’t paying cash, they are paying per mile rates that are below what the CTA would prefer for it’s members. There is also cheating on hours of service, using dyed fuel, and of course running trucks that are unsafe for the road.
Not too long ago I watched as MTO removed the plate from a dump truck, but didn’t wait around for the tow truck to show up. A few minutes after the MTO left, a guy in a van showed up with a plate, and they were off to working again.
No doubt that too.
There are probably dozens or even hundreds of ways to cheat the feds, who are, I repeat, slow, lazy, stupid and, as Heinlein wrote, “all public employees have larceny in their hearts or they wouldn’t be feeding at the public trough” .
Every heavily regulated/tazed industry eventually spawns a black market sector. As the burden grows, eventually every operator fades to black.
… and it’s got nothing to do with seizing truckers bank accounts. How do you drive (sorry) an industry to become cash and carry? Have an Authoritarian government seize everyone’s bank account. Boom!! The cash goes straight into the mattress.
Same thing happened in the 80s, people started paying cash for services rendered sans any tax on said item. Everything we pay is taxed to the hilt, if we added up all that we pay in taxes most of us would stand in line for Maid?
Import the 3rd world…..
Bureaucrats and politicians lack the honesty to objectively analyze a growing “cash” economy for what it is: a popular rebellion against Ceasar’s greed and waste.
They see it as evidence of the serfs getting uppity with their betters, and instead of easing the regulatory burdens and tax loads that are the sources of grief, they double down on the persecutions.
This is the root of the problem IMHO. Along with importing people who have no intention of playing by whities racist, colonial, settler rules.
Cost of compliance now exceeds the return on investment.
Cash/Barter shall rise again.
When government is the problem,paying any tax is treason.
All hail The State of Thuggery.
And trucker know the State of Thuggery,as demonstrated in Ottawa..
They know,they do not “suspect”.
As for Ontario, after Fat Ford passed a whole bunch of punitive laws against “Truckers who protest”,Ontario deserves some very “special” rates..Fees to cover the cost of risking doing business in this police state..
Now the Fools and Bandits..I mean governments will punish,audit and harass the honest truckers,til even they abandon compliance.
Faster.
Harder.
Good rant!
OK, I’ll say it. In Ontariostan, there is no Black Market.
It’s a Giant BROWN Market.
Durpa Durpa a bacala mohamed jihadi. Thats the only brown I know.
FILTHY LIBERALS!
Adios Canada.
I will pay cash for anything without a receipt
Hot Food, veggies, baked goods, fruit
Used goods
labor
Lodging
Services
It’s always less
They over tax your income.
They over tax your consumption.
They over tax your assets at death.
They over tax your hard work of long term investments (Capital Gains=65%).
They tax on tax of monopolized essential services (Ontario Hydro).
Anyway we can find to get out of paying taxes, we do that now.
And what they do with much, if not most, of the money is obscene.
Exactly.
Tax evasion is a crime
Tax avoidance is an obligation