I always hesitate to take a client’s money for a relief or fairness application because the CRA is usually pretty unsympathetic and the courts not much more helpful. In two relatively recent cases, the courts found that the CRA decision-making process in response to relief applications had been flawed, but the courts refused to provide a different result or order the Minister to reconsider the matter.
Labow appeal dismissed
The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed the taxpayer’s appeal in Labow v R, 2011 FCA 305. The taxpayer had paid amounts to an offshore health and welfare trust for his wife`s benefit (she was an employee in his surgical…
“Employee” loans
In Rémillard v R, 2011 TCC 327, the Court spent some time considering whether an employee is required to include an amount in income in respect of a loan advanced to him by his corporate employer if the loan is not a “commercial debt obligation” as defined in subsection 80(1).
Gambling again
Mr. Giuseppe Tarascio is not having much luck convincing the tax courts that his gambling losses should be deductible from his income for tax purposes. See Tarascio v R, 2012 FCA 30, aff’g a decision of Associate Chief Justice Rossiter dismissing the taxpayer’s appeal.
Quotes
I’ve been quoted a couple of times recently in tax-related stories in The Lawyers Weekly, most recently in a story on Johnson v R, 2011 TCC 540, which I wrote about here.
Corollary
In Vankerk v R, 2006 FCA 96 (which I wrote about here), the Court held that a taxpayer could not deduct a loss incurred in connection with an “investment” in a business that turned out to be a fraud. A…
Fuzzy logic
Is a gain realized on a sale of real property a capital gain or must it be fully included in income, perhaps because the sale was in connection with an “adventure in the nature of trade”? One might think that…
Acting in concert
Two unrelated individuals each own 50% of a corporation. If the daughter of one of them is an employee of the corporation, does she deal with it at arm’s length for the purposes of subsection 5(2) of the Employment Insurance…
Disbursement headache?
160 and Knowledge
For the purposes of section 160 of the Income Tax Act, it does not matter whether the transferor or transferee knows that the transferor owes tax at the time of the transfer. What they intend to accomplish by making the transfer is irrelevant as well. In both cases, section 160 will apply, if its other conditions are satisfied. But what about the case where the transferor purports to transfer property to the transferee without her knowledge or consent. In Leclair v Canada, 2011 TCC 323 the court held that section 160 did not apply in those circumstances.