The CRA has revoked the status of two more charities that had participated in tax shelters.
Insurance
The taxation of insurance policies is a world of its own, and in my experience not many advisers seem able to explain that world clearly. The virtue of White v. The Queen, 2008 TCC 414, an informal procedure case, is…
Lipson
The Supreme Court released its decision in Lipson today: see Lipson v. The Queen, 2009 SCC 1. The CanLII link to the case appears to be down right now, but it’ll probably be fixed later.
Limitation Periods
The following article appeared in the latest edition of the Hamilton Law Association Law Journal.
The Income Tax Act (Canada) (the “Act”) contains numerous limitation periods that affect when the Canada Revenue Agency (the “CRA”) can issue an assessment to a taxpayer and when a taxpayer can and cannot dispute such an assessment. Understanding these limitation periods is an important pre-requisite for advising clients about a wide variety of legal problems, including, for example, the expiry period for representations and warranties in a share purchase agreement.
Dividend Caps
Sometimes we receive instructions for incorporation that include a request to create shares with a fixed redemption amount and a right to receive unlimited dividends. We generally advise against creating such shares, especially if they are to be used in a freeze, because we are concerned that the fair market value of such a share will not be equal to its redemption amount, especially if the share will be held by a controlling shareholder.
$2.5 billion
The CRA continues to talk tough on donation tax shelter schemes. And why shouldn’t it? Its boast that “In 2008, Canadian courts have continued to confirm the CRA’s position with respect to these schemes” is accurate. What I find disturbing…
“Tax tip”
“Did you know… That you should notify the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) when directors of your corporation change?”
Ways and Means ’08
“Government of Canada Moves Quickly on Seniors’ Tax Relief and Other Outstanding Measures“. But can the government act quickly enough?
EBay released
eBay Canada Ltd. v. Canada (National Revenue), 2008 FCA 348 is now available on CanLII. The Court held that information on servers in the U.S. is not foreign-based information.
Non-competes, again
Thursday last I tried, once again, to explain the restrictive covenant rules in proposed section 56.4 of the Income Tax Act (Canada) to a seminar hosted by the Hamilton Law Association (please send an email to me if you would like a copy of the PowerPoint presentation). I’m not sure how well I succeeded. I find the rules difficult to work with and impossible to explain because they are so full of apparently random tricks and traps.