Tax Court of Canada suspends sittings until May 1st, 2020 and extends certain litigation deadlines
Like businesses that have to close in order to combat the spread of the COVID-19 virus, the Chief Justice of the Tax Court of Canada has closed the Court and Registry offices and issued a Practice Direction and Order dated March 23, 2020 cancelling all of its judicial sittings and conference calls until May 1st, 2020, inclusively. The Chief Justice will reassess on April 14th whether the judicial sittings schedule will have to be further altered.
To ease the burden on parties who are subject to deadlines imposed by the rules governing matters in the Tax Court or imposed by an Order of the Court made prior to March 16, 2020, the Chief Justice has excluded the period beginning on March 16th, 2020, and ending on May 1st, 2020 from the computation of time for compliance with the deadline.
Other statutory deadlines over which the Tax Court of Canada has no jurisdiction continue to apply. This means that Notices of Appeal to the Tax Court must be filed within the deadline provided by the relevant sections of the Income Tax Act and Excise Tax Act. Parties faced with statutory deadlines must file their documents before the expiry of the statutory deadline, electronically using the Tax Court of Canada on-line filing system https://apps.tcc-cci.gc.ca/appeals/jsp/appeal/disclaimer_e.html or by fax at 613-957-9034.