SimpsonWigle Law LLP Tax News

The feds have been talking about modernizing their not-for-profit statute for quite some time now, and they finally did it last week. Bill C-4 received Royal Assent as S.C. 2009, c. 23—the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act—on June 23, 2009. You can find the text of the bill here.

In Langille v. The Queen, 2009 TCC 139, the taxpayer attempted to claim an ABIL for amounts advanced to a corporation he controlled. The corporation in turn had suffered losses because it had participated in a joint venture that turned out to be a fraud. Read the rest of this entry »

In Markevich v. The Queen, 2003 SCC 9, the Supreme Court held that a limitation period applied to prevent the CRA from collecting an old tax debt. The CRA was no different from the rest of us, the Court said: limitation periods exist for good reasons, and the reasons apply to the government as well as those it governs. Read the rest of this entry »

Is a trust required to file a tax return where the trust’s only ‘income’ is a capital dividend? Read the rest of this entry »

The so-called “civil penalties” in section 163.2 of the Income Tax Act (Canada) have been with us since 2000. We learned today that the CRA has imposed the penalties in 24 cases to date and that it is considering whether to impose the penalties in another 100 cases.

I presented “Tax Cases of Interest” at the CRA’s quarterly Tax Practitioner’s Consultation Group meeting at the Royal Botanical Gardens this morning.

Lawyers will be familiar with Hare v. Hare, 2006 CanLII 41650, in which the Ontario Court of Appeal held that the limitation period for a demand note began to run with its delivery not with default, much to the consternation of the Ontario bar. The Ontario legislature moved quickly to amend the Limitations Act, 2002 with retroactive effect to January 1, 2004, so that the limitation period begins to run with default. For a useful summary, see this article in The Lawyer’s Weekly.

I’ve written a short article that provides some tips and tricks for preparing a notice of objection.

An employee of a corporation owns an option to purchase a share in the capital of the corporation. The corporation decides to amend the terms of the option. Does the amendment have any tax consequences? Maybe. Read the rest of this entry »

Unfortunately, with the experience I have working with the CRA, it is only too easy for me to imagine how this might happen: ‘Revenue Canada refuses to pay for million-dollar mistake‘. Wow.