Making use of a time-honored tradition in government communications, Canada’s Department of Finance last Friday afternoon released its amended proposal for a tax on luxury goods. Outside of tax season, of course, most people don’t visit government websites on the regular. But burying an official release in the wee hours of the working week makes it even less likely anyone will notice something potentially controversial or embarrassing. In this case, the government’s timing is almost certainly owed to a new provision added to the legislation since its initial drafting last year, which reads as follows: “Relief for aircraft is proposed to be expanded to take into account qualifying flights that are conducted in the course of a business with a reasonable expectation of profit.”

It’s a pretty soporific sequence of words, even with more context. But what it appears to mean is that Canada’s governing Liberal Party plans to amend their proposed tax on new luxury cars and aircraft so that private jets used in the course of business can be written off. Revisit the language in the Liberals’ 2021 budget and the more detailed backgrounder published in August, and the word “profit” does not appear. Some possible exemptions to the tax are mentioned, but they mostly have to do with planes imported for use by hospitals, local governments, or police and fire departments.

In other words: in the roughly seven months since the government published its previous version of the legislation, a major carveout has been added that quite visibly opens the door to all kinds of avoidance by wealthy individuals. According to its Friday release, the amended draft “reflect[s], and respond[s] to, input received during consultations with stakeholders,” which very likely means that the owners of private jets agitated for an exemption.