{"id":527,"date":"2013-03-18T15:37:44","date_gmt":"2013-03-18T15:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thor.ca\/\/blog\/?p=527"},"modified":"2025-02-12T13:29:32","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T21:29:32","slug":"federal-court-of-appeal-reverses-tax-court-on-active-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/2013\/03\/federal-court-of-appeal-reverses-tax-court-on-active-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Court of Appeal reverses Tax Court on \u201cactive business\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/thor.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/2013-FCA-74.pdf\"><em>Ollenberger v. The Queen<\/em><\/a> (2013 FCA 74), the Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) reversed the Tax Court of Canada (TCC) and held that \u201cactive business\u201d is specifically defined in s. 248(1) to mean \u201c<u>any<\/u> business\u201d other than two specific types of businesses specifically carved out (i.e., a specified investment business and a personal services business).  Surprisingly, the TCC earlier held that the word \u201cactive\u201d in the defined phrase \u201cactive business\u201d must mean something because it is descriptive of the word \u201cbusiness\u201d.  Rejecting this view, the FCA said the word \u201cactive\u201d does indeed have meaning, but that meaning must be taken from the definition of \u201cactive business\u201d (an obvious point, it would seem).  The FCA further reviewed the history of the definition, and held that the \u201cactive business\u201d concept was plainly meant to capture \u201cany business\u201d <em>other than<\/em> the two specifically excluded types of businesses.  On the facts, the record clearly showed that the company in question was \u201cactively pursuing ventures\u201d involving the potential acquisition of oil and gas properties: this plainly qualified as a business.  Furthermore, this was consistent with earlier case law which clarified that \u201ccarrying on a business\u201d requires only a minimum degree of activity, such that most corporations are in fact carrying on a business (<em>Weaver v. Canada<\/em>, 2008 FCA 238).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/thor.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/2013-FCA-74.pdf\"><em>Ollenberger v. The Queen<\/em><\/a> (2013 FCA 74), the Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) reversed the Tax Court of Canada (TCC) and held that \u201cactive business\u201d is specifically defined in s. 248(1) to mean \u201c<u>any<\/u> business\u201d other than two&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corporate-tax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","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\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2795,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions\/2795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thor.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}