Weekend Reading – Our tax code mess, screeners, doing it all wrong, Aeroplan and more + MORE Oct 2nd

The U.S. regulator that exposed Volkswagen’s rigging of emissions tests is investigating more than two dozen diesel car models made by BMW, Chrysler, General Motors, Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz to find out whether they engaged in similar cheating, the Financial Times reported.

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Welcome to October Weekend Reading friends. Although I’m not a huge baseball fan I was happy to see the Jays win the AL East title this week.  I’ll probably start watching more baseball now the playoffs are coming and the Jays are in it to win it.
If you haven’t entered already, get on this: enter my giveaway to win a copy of Mark Goodfield’s book Let’s Get Blunt About Your Financial Affairs.  I also critiqued this MoneySense article that said you should be more than fine in retirement, as long as you work 47 years, contribute the maximum to the Canada Pension Plan every year and save at least few thousand dollars per year for 40+ years straight without fail.
Enjoy these other fine articles and see you here next week – when I’ll begin a series profiling some bloggers who are on their way to retiring early by living off dividends and distributions.
According to the CBC our tax code is now almost 5 football fields long; putting page-after-page on the field…

Twenty years after its creation, the North American Free Trade Agreement is a force to be reckoned with. Its members—Canada, Mexico and the United States—together form the world’s largest economy, with over $20 trillion in GDP in 2014. With its large market, innovation base, abundant natural resources and talented and productive workers, the region rates as an attractive investment destination.
Yet NAFTA is unfinished business. After two decades of integration, the region’s internal linkages still need to be strengthened. Direct links between Canada and Mexico are few; almost all of the two countries’ regional trade, investment and people exchanges are with the United States. For the U.S., trade in services with the European Union is three times larger than with NAFTA. The links that do exist tend to be dominated by a few industries; in contrast, the EU’s internal trade flow covers a wider range of sectors.
Moreover, since the 2008 recession and initial recovery, the trend toward greater interconnectedness that marked NAFTA’s first decade has slowed…

MONTREAL – Legal problems facing the European subsidiary of Maple Financial Group is creating uncertainty for two of its largest investors — the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and the National Bank of Canada.
National Bank (TSX:NA) says its investment — which had a carrying value of $165 million as of Aug. 31 — was at risk for big losses because of allegations of tax irregularities between 2006 and 2010 in Germany against Maple Bank GmbH.
“Given the seriousness of the reported allegations and the actions which may be taken by German regulatory authorities . . . National Bank considers its investment at risk of substantial loss,” Canada’s sixth-largest bank said in a news release.
The bank holds a 24.9 per cent interest in Toronto-based Maple, just behind the 28 per cent state held by Teachers’, the country’s third-largest pension fund manager.
Vancouver’s Chan family owns 29 per cent, while Maple management and employees hold 13 per cent, with the remaining five per cent scattered among a number of investors, according to Maple’s financial report…