In Corsi v. The Queen, 2008 TCC 472, the CRA sent a 160 assessment to the taxpayer by registered mail in June, 2004, to her home address, which was not the address the CRA had on file for the taxpayer. For whatever reason, the taxpayer didn’t pick up the mail, and it was returned to the CRA. The CRA did nothing more with the assessment, but some time thereafter CRA Collections started calling the taxpayer. This was the first she heard about the assessment. The CRA then mailed a copy of the assessment to the taxpayer’s accountant in October, 2005, more than one year and 90 days after the first assessment was supposedly sent.
Unfortunately, the accountant did nothing with the assessment until May, 2007, when he filed a request for an extension of time within which to file the objection, which the CRA rejected. The taxpayer filed an appeal to the Tax Court in May, 2008.
The Court granted a motion by the Crown to dismiss the appeal for want of jurisdiction. No valid objection had been filed, and so the Court had no jurisdiction. The Court questioned whether the assessment had ever been validly issued because it had been sent to the wrong address (although the CRA, until the date of the motion had taken the position that the assessment was validly issued). The Court referred to The Queen v. 236130 British Columbia Ltd., 2006 FCA 352, in this regard. Nonetheless, the Court found that it could not address that question because the matter was not properly before it.
What remedy might the taxpayer have? Justice Boyle noted, rather ominously, “It may also be that Ms. Corsi’s remedy may be in another court, if any of her several professional advisers did not properly advise her or represent her.”
What more could the accountant have done? He didn’t receive the assessment dated June, 2004, until October, 2005, so that the CRA—given the position it took respecting the validity of the assessment and its date of mailing—was bound to reject any objection he filed or any application he might have made to extend the time for filing an objection.
With hindsight, especially in light of Justice Boyle’s comments, it seems that the accountant should have filed an objection anyway and then, when the CRA purported to reject it, he could have filed an appeal to the Tax Court. At the Tax Court, the taxpayer could have taken the position that the assessment wasn’t mailed until it was sent to the accountant and that, therefore, her objection was in time and her appeal was properly before the Court.
