In Anchor Pointe Energy Ltd. v. the Queen, 2007 FCA 188 the Court held\u00a0 \u201c[i]t is trite law that, barring exceptions, the initial onus of proof with respect to assumptions of fact made by the Minister in assessing a taxpayer\u2019s tax liability and quantum rests with the taxpayer.\u201d<\/p>\n
The phrase \u201cbarring exceptions\u201d is an important one in law because an inflexible application of a rule will often result in unfairness. However, as soon as exceptions are permitted there will be questions as to the principles that govern the rule that grants the exception. In Mignardi v. The Queen, 2013 TCC 67 the Court expounded upon the exception to the rule.<\/p>\n
In Mignardi, the appellant had been a director of a company. He was assessed for GST which, it was alleged,\u00a0 had not been remitted. The Court concluded that despite \u201ctimely and repeated requests\u201d that the appellant made for particulars, \u201cthe Minister failed to provide sufficient information concerning the audit and assessments [of the company] to allow him to adequately respond to the director\u2019s liability assessment\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Court held that in the circumstances of the case the onus of proof should be reversed.\u00a0\u00a0 It arrived at this conclusion on the basis of the principle that where the facts concerning the basis of the tax liability are \u201cexclusively or peculiarly within the knowledge of the Minister that the burden will be shifted.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is not a statement of a new legal principle.\u00a0 However, the Court\u2019s analysis in Mignardi brings clarity to and affirms the importance of the principle. Further, the case illustrates the importance of having facts in a particular case, which support the shifting of the onus. As is well known, a careful litigation strategy is essential to the development of the evidence which will support a court\u2019s factual findings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Anchor Pointe Energy Ltd. v. the Queen, 2007 FCA 188 the Court held\u00a0 \u201c[i]t is trite law that, barring exceptions, the initial onus of proof with respect to assumptions of fact made by the Minister in assessing a taxpayer\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tax-blog-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524","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\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2796,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524\/revisions\/2796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}