I wrote about whether an officer or director of a corporation could represent it in a Tax Court appeal in a post I wrote about White Star Copper Mines Limited v R, 2007 TCC 669. A more recent decision appears to deviate from the approach taken in White Star.
ABIL
Jamie Golombek has written an interesting piece on a taxpayer who tried to claim an ABIL and was met with the usual CRA skepticism. The issue in dispute in the Tax Court appeal eventually resolved itself into whether a return…
Garron dismissed
The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the taxpayer’s appeal in the Garron case: see Fundy Settlement v Canada, 2012 SCC 14, which I wrote about here.
A victim of fraud
I found it impossible not to feel sorry for Mr Ruff, a lawyer who paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to a team of fraudsters: see Ruff v R, 2012 TCC 105. Naturally, the CRA disallowed his attempt to deduct the losses as business expenses. The Tax Court agreed with the Minister’s position.
Soliciting VDs?
Several clients of a colleague of mine have received letters from the CRA requesting that the taxpayers make a disclosure to the CRA if they happen to find unspecified errors in their tax returns.
More rectification cases
Blaine Cameron at KPMG, Hamilton, was kind enough to point me in the direction of two recent rectification decisions.
Exemption trap
March 30 Update John Campbell, in a comment posted below, points out that paragraph 110.6(15)(b) likely provides an escape from the “trap” that I discuss below at least insofar that one is concerned about whether the shares of Holdco qualify for the exemption.
I was helping a fellow tax professional with a situation like the following where I think I almost stumbled into a trap relating to the $750,000 capital gain exemption.
Learned Hand on Tax
The eminent jurist Learned Hand on the 1939 Internal Revenue Code: In my own case the words of such an act as the income tax, for example, merely dance before my eyes in a meaningless procession: cross-reference to cross-reference, exception…
Natural person ‘arguments’
Yet another ‘tax protester’ has been convicted of evasion in R v Porisky & Gould, 2012 BCSC 67. The judge described the natural person ‘argument’ as “a failed attempt at word magic validity” and “legal numerology”. That’s exactly right.
Partnership information return
A posting to the LinkedIn group “CDN Tax Cases and Tax Commentary” a few days ago alerted me to a post on the CRA website, which post contained the following gem: In February 2012, the CRA issued a revised version…