From time to time my clients contemplate leaving Canada for warmer weather or more friendly tax collectors. Over the years, I have collected a set of CRA publications and forms that provide useful guidance on the tax consequences of becoming…
Public relations and battling fraud
Judging by a recent press release, the CRA has hired a new public relations officer.
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:
Draft legislation for Christmas
The Department of Finance generally gives tax practitioners a little something—obscure draft legislation usually—to chew on between Christmas and New Year’s. I was beginning to worry that the Department had forgotten about us this year, but I should have known…
The night before Christmas
The following mentions tax, and so I think it is legitimate content for this blog.
May I say that we lawyers deserve the satire aimed at us by this poem.
New blogs
Our firm is in the process of rolling out several new blogs. One of them is about trusts and estates. Cathy Olsiak and I have just posted an article to the blog about donating securities through a will.
Ontario simplifies
You have all read that the Ontario government plans to turn over the administration of its corporate income tax regime to the CRA. The government introduced draft legislation today to make that a reality. Now, when will the government muster…
CRA stamping service
Some time ago, I complained about the CRA’s decision to close its mail rooms to the public in the name of cost-cutting. Many of you echoed my complaints in subsequent conversations and emails. It appears the CRA has changed its…
Anchor Pointe
The CRA’s Appeals branch, according to P148 (“Resolving Your Dispute: Objection and Appeal Rights Under the Income Tax Act”), exists “to resolve disputes arising from decisions made under legislation administered by the [CRA] by conducting fair and impartial reviews.” In fact, Appeals sometimes ends up acting as if the objection process were a second chance to audit the taxpayer: sometimes officers of the branch appear to spend more time trying to repair deficiencies in the CRA’s case against the taxpayer than they do considering the taxpayer’s submissions. When this happens, is relief available to the taxpayer?
Beneficiaries gone wild!
As tax advisers, we regularly advise our clients to enter into various legal relationships in order to help them reduce the taxes they would otherwise incur. In providing such advice, however, we would do well to remind our clients that those legal relationships have more than just tax consequences. Rose v. Rose, 81 O.R. (3d) 349, 2006 CanLII 20856 (ON S.C.) could be the cautionary tale.