SimpsonWigle Law LLP Tax News

Bill C-52 received Royal Assent on June 22. It is now law as S.C. 2007, c. 29.

The following article on subsection 75(2) of the Income Tax Act (Canada) appeared in the latest edition of the Hamilton Law Association Law Journal. (more…)

I maintain a page on this site with some useful links for the tax practitioner. I have just added a link to the CRA’s page listing its prescribed rates.

If any of you have other ideas for useful links that should be added to my page, please let me know.

Bill C-52, which implements “certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 19, 2007″, is now at the “Report Stage” (the stage immediately before 3rd Reading). Meanwhile, poor old Bill C-33 continues to languish in committee. Bill C-33 contains technical amendments that apparently get no respect: some of the amendments date back to December, 2002, at least.

The “committee” in this case is the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. It met yesterday to consider C-33, and apparently it will meet again tomorrow for that same purpose.

In Boutilier v. The Queen, 2007 TCC 96, the taxpayer received trailer fees and reported them as income he had earned. Later, he purported to transfer his fee-earning business to a company. Fees received by the taxpayer were assigned to the company and reported in its income. The Minister reassessed on the basis that subsection 56(4) of the Income Tax Act applied to the transfer of the fees to the company. (more…)

In St-Pierre c. La Reine, 2007 CCI 90, the taxpayer transferred shares of a corporation to his management company, which he controlled. The management company transferred the shares to the taxpayer’s spouse. The spouse later disposed of shares substituted for the transferred shares, and she realized a capital gain as a result. The Minister reassessed the husband on the basis that the gain should be attributed to him under subsection 74.2(1) of the Income Tax Act. The Tax Court agreed on the basis that the husband had caused the management company to transfer shares to his spouse and that, therefore, he had transferred property to her “indirectly…by any means whatever” as required by the subsection.

How do subsection 55(2) and Part IV of the Income Tax Act (Canada) work together? The Tax Court considered this question recently in Ottawa Air Cargo Centre Ltd. v. The Queen, 2007 TCC 193 (”Air Cargo”). (more…)