The National Post recently had an article by Christopher Nardi “Charity sector worth $300B per year, but CRA audits have dropped four-fold since 2010“. It discusses the dramatic decline in CRA audits previously discussed on our blog at Dramatic changes…
CRA recently provided a redacted letter on “Whether an individual may claim a non-refundable tax credit on their final return for a gift by will, to a U.S. organization.” The letter has a good summary of how donations by Canadian…
It looks like Bill S-216, the Effective and Accountable Charities Act has passed the Senate and will now move to the House of Commons. It was formerly Bill S-222 but died when the Liberals called that very important 2021 Federal…
I recently read on a blog with some statistics relating to the number of audits that the Charities Directorate of CRA was conducting each year. Frankly, I could not believe the numbers so I wrote to CRA to ask them…
In the case of Piett v Global Learning Group Inc., 2021 SKQB 232 the Saskatchewan Court of Queen’s Bench decided not to certify a class action on GLGI as there is already one in Ontario. Here is good coverage of the case…
The Ontario PGT recently published a page “Charities: making a complaint” explaining how to make a complaint about a charity. We have previously discussed the topic of complaining about charities here. Here is the full text of the PGT…
The last complete data year from the CRA and the T3010 is now 2019. Consequently, we have updated CharityData.ca to be based on the 2019 data when conducting searches or filtering. The website still has material from 2003 -2020 but…
Here is Blumbergs’ Written Submission to the Department of Finance about the disbursement quota. As we note in the submission, we are firmly in favour of an increase in the disbursement quota. We so suggest possible changes in our submission…
In this article “Should the disbursement quota for registered charities in Canada change or be left alone?”, Mark Blumberg and Jessie Lang discuss the disbursement quota (DQ) and the Department of Finance’s consultation on whether the Income Tax Act should be…
I was asked the question “How engaged are Canadian registered charities in this election?” by a journalist and to be honest, I had to say I have no idea. There seems to be a big disconnect between the words spoken…
At a time when charities need funds and private foundations alone are sitting on $95 billion dollars, the Advisory Committee to the Charitable Sector (ACCS) has prepared a submission to Finance Canada stating that the disbursement quota (DQ) issue is…
Many Canadian registered charities have March 31 year ends. Mostly these are aligned with government funders who have a similar year-end. These March 31 registered charities need to ensure that they can accurately file their T3010 by September 30.…
In the 2021 Federal Budget, it was announced that the Department of Finance will be doing a consultation on the disbursement quota and whether it should be raised. Interesting that the title used by Finance is “Consultation: Boosting charitable spending…
Here is the Blumbergs’ Submission to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance for the Pre-Budget Consultations in Advance of the Upcoming 2022 Federal Budget. We offer 11 recommendations namely the following: List of Recommendations Primary Recommendations Recommendation…
In this excellent article by Steven Ayer, he writes that confidence in the charity sector has fallen considerably over the last two decades. The article “Confidence in charity leaders has fallen sharply over the last two decades – what does…
With respect to a recent bill passed by the Senate, but not the House of Commons, relating to structured arrangements/direction and control we have prepared the following blog posts with our concerns about the bill and its ultimate impact. …
I recently read a fascinating report from the Edmonton Chamber of Voluntary Organizations (ECVO) on Transforming the Non-Profit Community in Edmonton. It is relevant to all cities and communities in Canada. So many great quotes but here are just a…
In the last couple of weeks I have read two separate CRA notes on the importance of maintaining sufficient separation between a registered charity and a non-qualified donee (whether non-profit, foreign charity, for-profit, etc) Here is an excerpt from a…
CRA has announced new webinars dealing with registered charities and receipting. Here is a link. Here is the note from CRA: Charities and giving – What’s new Charities information webinars We are pleased to announce that the next charities…
CRA recently sent out an email entitled “Warning: Watch out for tax shelter gifting schemes“. I am not sure if this is just regular communication or there is an upswing in these. You would think that they would be warning…
On April 21, 2021 we had our Blumbergs’ Canadian Charity Law Boot Camp 2021. It is the second Boot Camp that we have conducted online and our tenth Boot Camp in total. Those who missed the course can catch the…
A lot has changed in 2 years when the last Federal budget was delivered. Today, Canadian Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland introduced a Federal Budget and you can see our initial comments at “2021 Canadian Federal Budget and its impact on…
Someone sent me a link to a report from the Centre for Inquiry Canada entitled “The Costs of Religion in Canada“. It is advocating for proselytization to be removed as charitable and groups that are only for the advancement of…
I just finished reading an excellent paper entitled Cross-Border Philanthropy – A U.S. Perspective by Eric Zolt. It both provides a good summary of the rationale for donation tax incentives but also raises questions of whether the US system is…