Subsection 104(13.4) of the Income Tax Act (the “Act”) will come into effect on January 1, 2016. If not corrected, this provision will have a catastrophic and devastating effect on many estate plans involving alter ego trusts, joint spousal and…
The recent case of Boroumand v. The Queen 2015 TCC 239 neatly illustrates just how challenging a forum the Tax Court can be for certain appellants. The facts of the case are unremarkable and common enough: the appellant was brought…
In a case of what could be considered “good news/bad news,” certain naturopathic and acupuncturist services became GST/HST-exempt effective February 12, 2014. The Canada Revenue Agency (“CRA”) recently released its administrative interpretation of these new exemptions (see Technical Information Bulletin…
It is an entrenched common law rule that domestic courts must refuse to enforce tax claims of a foreign government (United States of America v. Harden, [1963] SCR 366). This rule, known as the “revenue rule”, was once regarded as…
It is not often that tax cases wind their way to the Supreme Court of Canada so both that Court’s judgments on specific points of tax law, as well as it’s more general observations about tax law are of interest.…
Traditionally, the Tax Court only awarded costs that deviated from the Tariff annexed to the Tax Court of Canada Rules (General Procedure) (the “Rules”) in the presence of reprehensible, scandalous or outrageous conduct on the part of one of the…
In litigation there are winners and losers. In Deans Knight Income Corp. v. The Queen, 2015 TCC 143 the Appellant lost in its attempt to have the court strike GAAR from the Minister’s pleadings and the court’s reasons leading to…
The short answer to the question of the connection between Canada’s new anti-terrorism laws and taxes is that recent amendments to the Income Tax and Excise Tax Acts which arise through the Anti-Terrorism Act permit more extensive disclosure and sharing…
In Discovery Trust v. Minister of National Revenue, 2015 NLTD(G)86, the Newfoundland Supreme Court issued Canada’s first decision involving the provincial residency of a trust. This is also the first decision to apply the test for trust residency articulated…
When a taxpayer enters into an agreement with the CRA in the course of an audit of a particular taxation year, the taxpayer likely expects that the CRA will not come back to audit and reassess that same year again.…