If you teach at a private school, and the school offers your children discounted tuition as part of your compensation package, what is the value of the benefit that must be included in your income for the purposes of the…
Gifts and Family Law
When the patriarch or matriarch of a family decides to implement a freeze it is quite common for him or her to insist that the gift of the growth shares be excluded from net family property for the purposes of the Family Law Act (Ontario). Are such exclusions effective? McNamee v McNamee, 2011 ONCA 533, illustrates well why lawyers must emphasize to clients that the answer is still a definite “maybe”.
Buckingham
For those of us who defend director liability cases, R v Buckingham, 2011 FCA 142, is a must-read.
Nullity
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the procedural rules for tax disputes are strict: they do not leave room for what is “fair”. In Hess v. R, 2011 TCC 387, the taxpayer, it might have been argued, filed an objection to a notice of assessment issued in 2003. The CRA, however, reassessed the taxpayer for the same year in 2006, and the taxpayer took no action in respect of the subsequent reassessment until 2009. Justice Woods responded to the fairness argument as follows:
Crazy
The judgment in Chaput v R, 2011 TCC 363, is short and to the point. I reproduce it here in its entirety:
Kiddie tax
In Jeannotte v R, 2011 TCC 247, the taxpayer’s representative tried to argue that the Court should make an exception to the kiddie tax rules on income from a trust that was set up, not to avoid tax, but to…
The Gambler
The upsurge in interest in all things poker-related has sort of passed me by, like a lot of other trends and fashions. But, because I am a tax nerd, I have asked myself why it is that those who make a living playing poker, or who make some money at it anyway, don’t seem to pay tax on their winnings? I suspect that the answer can be found in Cohen v R, 2011 TCC 262.
DIY Tax Planning Gone Wrong
It seems that, in S & D International Group Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), 2011 ABQB 230, the court confronted a situation where the parties engaged in some do-it-yourself tax planning and, then, some do-it-yourself tax repair work. Fortunately for…
Privilege and a claim for legal expenses
In RICHARD A. KANAN CORPORATION v R, 2011 TCC 211, an informal procedure case, the Court was asked “how much information can the Minister, or the Court, require a taxpayer to produce in support of his or her expenses, if that information is subject to solicitor-client privilege?” (¶ 1).
Marechaux dismissed
The Supreme Court of Canada has dismissed the taxpayer’s application for leave to appeal from the decision of Federal Court of Appeal.