{"id":1703,"date":"2016-12-22T16:04:59","date_gmt":"2016-12-22T16:04:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thor.ca\/\/blog\/?p=1703"},"modified":"2016-12-22T23:11:07","modified_gmt":"2016-12-22T23:11:07","slug":"federal-court-of-appeal-finds-associate-degree-tuition-fees-are-gst-exempt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/2016\/12\/federal-court-of-appeal-finds-associate-degree-tuition-fees-are-gst-exempt\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Court of Appeal finds Associate Degree tuition fees are GST exempt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/thor.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/2016fca269.pdf\"><em>Alexander College Corp. v. Canada<\/em><\/a>, 2016 FCA 269, the Federal Court of Appeal recently overturned the Tax Court of Canada on the issue of whether a private college offering an associate degree program must charge GST on its tuition and related fees.\u00a0 The appellant college was a private for-profit college in British Columbia, authorized by the province of British Columbia to grant associate degrees.\u00a0 The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) had reassessed the college for GST collectible on tuition fees, on the basis that the college did not qualify as a \u201cuniversity\u201d as defined in subsection 123(1) of the Excise Tax Act (the Act).\u00a0 \u201cUniversity\u201d is defined in the Act as a \u201crecognized degree-granting institution\u201d (or certain affiliated or research bodies). \u00a0\u201cDegree\u201d is not defined in the Act. \u00a0The CRA\u2019s view was that the college was not a \u201crecognized degree-granting institution\u201d because an associate degree is not a \u201cdegree\u201d for the purposes of the Act. \u00a0As such, the college\u2019s degree-program tuition fees were not exempt from GST under section 7, Part III, Schedule V. \u00a0The Tax Court of Canada upheld the reassessment, finding that the college\u2019s tuition fees were not exempt because the college was not authorized to call itself a university under provincial law and because an associate degree is not a \u201cdegree\u201d for the purposes of the Act.\u00a0 The Federal Court of Appeal overturned the Tax Court\u2019s decision, finding that the definition of \u201cuniversity\u201d in the Act is clear: an institution is a \u201crecognized degree-granting institution\u201d if it is empowered to grant a degree under provincial law, regardless of whether the institution is also authorized to use \u201cuniversity\u201d in its name.\u00a0 \u00a0The college was a \u201crecognized degree-granting institution\u201d by virtue of its authorization to grant associate degrees, which are recognized as degrees under provincial law in British Columbia.\u00a0 As a \u201crecognized degree-granting institution,\u201d the college met the definition of \u201cuniversity\u201d in the Act and its tuition fees were exempt from GST.\u00a0 The decision recognizes the intent of the Act to generally exempt educational services from GST and is a welcome one for students of private colleges pursuing associate degrees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/thor.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/2016fca269.pdf\"><em>Alexander College Corp. v. Canada<\/em><\/a>, 2016 FCA 269, the Federal Court of Appeal recently overturned the Tax Court of Canada on the issue of whether a private college offering an associate degree program must charge GST on its&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gsthst"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}