In Ahamed v. The King (“Ahamed”), the Tax Court of Canada held that a tax-free savings account (“TFSA”), despite its moniker, is capable of carrying on a business of trading securities and any income earned from that business is fully…
Authors: Alexander Demner, Tyler Berg, and Gloria Wang
The federal government released its 2021 budget on April 19, 2021. Coming in as the longest budget in Canadian history, Budget 2021 proposes a myriad of income tax…
Minister of Finance, Bill Morneau, tabled the 2019 Budget today (“Budget Day”). This Thorsteinssons update summarizes some of the main tax takeaways.
The tax measures introduced in the Budget should not impact the vast majority of businesses. As a pre-election…
Earnings within Tax-Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs) and other tax-deferred plans are, in principle, supposed to grow “tax-free”. However, some taxes can still apply. One such tax is the advantage tax which applies at the rate of 100% of any advantage…
Almost since Tax-Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs) were first introduced in 2009, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) has been intent on clamping down on what it views as inappropriate activities undertaken within TFSAs. One area in particular has raised the ire…
We have reported previously on the audit initiatives of the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) with respect to Tax-Free Savings Accounts (TFSAs) (http://www.thor.ca/tax-alerts/punitive-tfsa-audits/ and http://thor.ca/blog/2012/11/cra-begins-issuing-tax-free-savings-account-tfsa-reassessments/). Recent discussions and correspondence with the CRA suggest a significant expansion of those audit activities.…