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. (more…)

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. (more…)

Is a trust required to file a tax return where the trust’s only ‘income’ is a capital dividend? (more…)

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.