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BEWARE THE WALKING DEAD: Tax Incentives for Angel Investors Twenty-five years ago, the government of British Columbia introduced the SMALL BUSINESS VENTURE CAPITAL ACT. After a quarter of a century, it’s probably time that we reflected on how effective that program has been. The BC venture capital credit is the granddaddy of all the provincial … Read more
Canada’s Business Development Bank weighs in on the ‘decline in the number of Canadian entrepreneurs’ A few days ago, I came across several articles in the Globe and Mail on a new study by the BDC and the University of Montreal. The study addressed a supposed decline in the number of Canadian ‘entrepreneurs’. “The study … Read more
THE NEW CPA COMPILATION STANDARDS CPA CANADA ROLLS OUT NEW STANDARDS FOR COMPILATIONS In 2021, CPA Canada introduced a new standard for compilation engagements. For accounting practitioners that work with small business clients that will mean increased work – and likely increased fees for their clients. Failing that the practitioners will absorb the cost and … Read more
The Unicorn Kingdom A SURVEY OF FIVE COUNTRIES (AND THEIR STARTUP ECOSYSTEMS)(HUNTING FOR UNICORNS – PART 2) Hunting for Unicorns – Youtube.com According to CB INSIGHTS there are over 1,200 unicorns around the world. A unicorn company, or unicorn startup, is a private company with a valuation over $1 billion. As of July 2023, there … Read more
BC’s Venture Capital Tax Credits – Do They Make Sense? (Hunting for Unicorns – Part 1) Government Incubators – Youtube.com About ten years ago, I invested in a VCC in the Province of British Columbia. ‘VCC’ is the acronym for a VENTURE CAPITAL CORPORATION as defined by my province’s SMALL BUSINESS VENTURE CAPITAL ACT. BC’s … Read more
CONSPIRACY THEORIES AROUND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE My wife bumped into a tradesman in the gas station who’d done some work for us on a renovation before the pandemic. During the pandemic like most of us, he got a little weird. While he and my wife were in line paying for their gas, he began spouting his … Read more
This company was featured in a recent article in the GLOBE AND MAIL – Canada’s National Business NewspaperThe headline was: Canadian companies face unexpected tax burdens after going public on stock exchanges “Canada has been the worst-performing advanced economy in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development since 1976. Governments of all partisan stripes have … Read more
Unicorns don’t exist. So why are there so many of them? Unicorns are supposed to be mythical beasts. Yet, according to a 2019 article published in the World Economic Forum, there were 326 of them in 2017. And if the new PM of the United Kingdom has his way, we can expect to see more … Read more
Canada’s Falling Productivity (and what’s behind it) THE PRODUCTIVITY-EDUCATION LINK The conventional wisdom is that the more highly-educated the workforce, the greater the productivity should be. Most policy analysts and think tanks seem to reach the same conclusion. In September of 2019, Gwilym Croucher[1] wrote in OXFORD BIBLIOGRAPHIES: “Universities and colleges now demand a greater … Read more
According to Wikipedia “Lies, damned lies, and statistics” is a phrase describing the persuasive power of statistics to bolster weak arguments, “one of the best, and best-known” critiques of applied statistics. It is also sometimes colloquially used to doubt statistics used to prove an opponent’s point. The phrase was popularized in the United States by … Read more