Salary and shareholder loan accounts

In Irmen v. The Queen, 2006 TCC 475, the taxpayer, a shareholder and key employee of a corporation, received amounts from the corporation throughout the taxation year. During the year, the corporation accounted for the amounts as salary, and CPP and tax was deducted and remitted. At the end of the year, however, the taxpayer and his accountant decided that he should really have taken amounts from the corporation as a draw on his shareholder loan. Adjusting entries were made accordingly, and the taxpayer reported only a small amount as employment income in the taxation year. The CRA, however, reassessed the taxpayer as if he had received salary and not a draw on his shareholder loan.

Surrogatum

How to treat payments received as damages in a lawsuit—whether as a result of a judgment or pursuant to a settlement—can be a vexing question. The Supreme Court of Canada provided some guidance in Tsiaprailis v. Canada, [2005] 1 S.C.R. 113, 2005 SCC 8. The Tax Court applied Tsiaprailis recently in Bourgault Industries Ltd. v. The Queen, 2006 TCC 449. Justice Woods, in the latter case, characterized the analysis as follows: