The CBC recently reported “Some Toronto-area mosques remain open despite dire warnings about COVID-19“. This might be a problem for a number of different religious groups. It is important for charities from a charity regulation point of view to have…
The CRA announced tonight that registered charities filing deadline for the T3010 that were or will be due from March 18, 2020 till December 31, 2020, will only be due on December 31, 2020. This will be a welcome relief…
Here is a document from finance released today Canada’s COVID-19 Economic Response Plan: Support for Canadians and Businesses. It is a large package of different measures from the Government of Canada to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. It outlines some…
Over the last year, Blumbergs has released 8 online courses. In case you are interested we have provided over the next 2 weeks a 50% discount coupon for new registrants wishing to access our Blumbergs charity law courses. We realize…
Here is an updated Canadian Charity Legal Checklist by Mark Blumberg. It is a checklist for Canadian registered charities to assist them with managing compliance issues. We use it as part of our informal risk reviews that we do for…
SEE NEW BLOG WITH UPDATES CRA: Charities Directorate announces extension of T3010 filing deadlines till December 31, 2020 in response to COVID-19 — There has been a lot of pressure on CRA to announce changes to various tax deadlines. We…
CRA recently updated their page dealing with Penalties and suspensions. The big changes appear to be a whole section on penalties and suspension for registered journalism organizations – of which there are none currently! Also, they updated the language relating…
Canadian registered charities now have more options when it comes to filing their T3010 for 2019. The form can be filed electronically through the CHAMP system (since June 1, 2019) or a registered charity can still file using the paper…
We recently put online CRA letters to registered charities that had been revoked over the last few years as a result of audit. It was interesting to see a number of charities that were revoked just because of being dormant. …
On January 27, 2020, the Honourable Justice Ronald MacPhee of the Tax Court of Canada (TCC) rejected an appeal from Alexandru Tudora dealing with the Global Learning Gifting Initiative Program. I must admit I was not really paying attention as…
The Federal Court of Appeal on December 5, 2019 dismissed the appeal in Markou V. Canada relating to the ‘abusive charity gifting tax scheme’ “Donation Program for Medical Science and Technology”. The Tax Court of Canada had followed the precedent…
Here is a recent bulletin from CRA dealing with the problem of fraudulent official donation receipts. Canada Revenue Agency Feb 07, 2020, 16:33 ET TORONTO, Feb. 7, 2020 /CNW Telbec/ – The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) announced that George…
CRA has said that they will no longer accept the RC59 Business Consent for Offline Access and now as of today one will need to use the new Form AUT-01 Authorize a Representative for Access by Phone and Mail. The…
Here are the CRA letters from a number of recent Canadian registered charity revocations. These letters from CRA cover many different grounds for de-registration. Some relate to relatively minor matters such as an organization being inactive for many years, to…
Donor Advised Funds are registered charities in Canada that allow a donor to donate to the charity but the donor retains the ability to recommend which registered charities or qualified donees will receive the funds. Donor Advised Funds or DAFs…
If you have ever wondered what are some of the most common findings CRA has when it audits charities well here is the “Top Five Audit Issues“: Incorrect issuance of donation receipts. Incorrect allocations on the T3010. Books and records…
On June 28, 2019, the Tax Court of Canada released its decision Promised Land Ministries v the Queen, in which it upheld CRA's decision to suspend the registered charity Promised Land Ministries (“PLM”)'s receipting privileges for one year for failing to…
The Canada Revenue Agency’s (CRA) Charities Directorate is the de facto regulator of Registered Charities in Canada and they audit between 600 and 800 charities per year. This article Registered Charities and CRA Charity Audits will help you understand the process…
I wrote an article many years ago encouraging informal legal reviews by non-profits and charities. It was called “Canadian nonprofit and charity legal audits: Forget about it!”. Over the past 11 years the world has changed a bit – more…
In a presentation to E&Y Gary Huenemoeder of the Charities Directorate provided certain updated audit statistics for 2016-2017 which shows the outcomes of the CRA's completed audits. Audit statistics(2016-2017) •Audits completed –652 Results: •Clean audits –38 •Education letters issued –387…
CRA has provided information through ATIP on third-party civil penalties from 2009 to 2016. The number of completed third-party penalty audits where it was determined that the penalty would be applied is 67. The amount of the penalties was about $164 million. Here…
CRA uses a risk based approach to deciding which charities are to be audited. CRA a few months ago announced they are adjusting their audit strategy to focus more on larger Canadian registered charities. I guess someone in the past…
We recently had Gary Huenemoeder of the Charities Directorate presenting at our Blumbergs’ Charity Law Institute and providing an update on charity audits. According to CRA, in 2015/2016 there were 726 audits completed. The results are broken down here:…
CRA has recently posted two new web pages on Charities and political activities (Budget 2012) and The audit process for charities. The two pages have some new information and statistics but really are just cogent expressions of the CRA's views. …