The taxpayer in Gabriel v R, 2024 TCC 166, seems to have had a lucky escape. He was a shareholder of a corporation that did not have its own bank account. Along with another minority shareholder, he paid expenses on behalf of the corporation. Not surprisingly, his shareholder loan account was a mess. The CRA alleged that he had received a benefit in each of 2010 and 2011 in part because of the opening and closing balances of the loan account in each of the years. The Court, however, preferred to rely on the debits and credits to the account verified by the CRA auditor and concluded no benefit had been conferred because the credits and debits aggregated over the two years left a credit balance!
See summary in Tax Topics no 2724 (February 11, 2025)
