CRTC has recently released its “Guidelines to help businesses develop corporate compliance programs”. The CRTC is quite tentative in their Guidelines. This we know. The Guidelines are not legal advice, they are guidance and they “may” help facilitate legal…
CRA recently released a letter which discusses whether an employee will realize a taxable benefit if the employee opts to forego a non-cash gift valued over $500 that he or she is otherwise entitled to and directs the employer to…
CRA recently released a letter which discusses whether the transfer of the custody of a fossil to a qualified donee can be considered a charitable gift. CRA concluded that this would be a question of both fact and law but…
CRA recently released a letter which discusses whether the donation of a conservation easement by a landowner would be considered a gift for tax purposes. CRA provided general comments on ecological gifts. CRA provides that for a donation of land…
I never thought I would live to see the day. Yes a popular magazine has a story that revolves around the T2050 – Application to Register a Charity Under the Income Tax Act. Now Magazine has an article entitled “Men’s…
On July 1, 2014 Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) will come into force. Here is a brief article describing some of the key points of CASL and how it will impact Canadian charities. For further information on CASL you might find…
The House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance has released a press release encouraging Canadian to share pre-budget proposals on six key themes. Here is a link to the news release and below is the text: “NEWS RELEASE CANADIANS…
The Ontario Ministry has provided an update on their website with respect to the Not-for-Profit Corporations Act, 2010 (“ONCA”) under 'ONCA: Frequently Asked Questions” which indicates that the ONCA is not expected to come into force before 2016. Initially there…
In Narul Hassan vs. The Queen it is another false receipting case. “It appears almost certain that this program involved a fraud on the Canadian tax system, and therefore on the Canadian public. It is not clear to me…
CRA has appealed the decision of David, R. et al. v. The Queen (TCC) to the Federal Court of Appeal. This case involved six separate appeals with respect to the disallowance of a tax credit by CRA for a purported…
On May 29, 2014 the Supreme Court of Canada denied leave to appeal in Neville v. National Foundation for Christian Leadership. It was an application for leave to appeal the decision of the BCCA in January 2014. Here is original…
On May 14, 2014, Alberta's Bill 12 – Statutes Amendment Act, 2014 received Royal Assent (it has not yet come into force). The Alberta Societies Act which governs many not-for-profit corporations in Alberta is one of the statutes that was…
CRA recently released a letter which discusses whether cash prizes awarded to Olympic athletes should be taxed. CRA stated that a cash prize does not qualify as a prescribed prize and provided the following comments: “However, under the Income Tax…
On October 15, 2014 the Blumbergs Charity Law Institute will be held in Toronto.
The Kathryn Kossow v. Her Majesty The Queen application for leave to appeal was dismissed with costs by the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) on May 15, 2014. The Federal Court of Appeal released its adverse decision against the taxpayers in December 2013.…
Anecdotally, it feels like the charity application process has become harder. We have before published stats on the registrations of Canadian registered charities by the Determinations section of the Charity Directorate and so I thought I would crunch some numbers.…
Here is a blurb from the ONN May E-bulletin: “Just how many nonprofits?! It's amazing the number of calls and emails we received about this first-ever list of nonprofits in Ontario. What we know: there are 59,605 registered not-for-profit…
The budget had a number of interesting proposals – perhaps my favourite was improving the pay of personal support workers (PSW). Many who even wanted an election liked some of the aspects of the budget and hopefully one day some…
I recently requested numbers from CRA on abusive charity gifting tax schemes. The number are trending down. 2006 was the highest at $1.3 billion. 2011 was $299 million. 2012 was $273,000. 2013 preliminary numbers are $100,000 but as we know…
The T3010 now asks additional questions about political activities. So far the CRA 2013 database has about 36,000 charities on it. There are in total approximately 86,000 Canadian registered charities who will file their T3010s. Therefore, less than half of the 2013…
Here are some documents from the Federal Court of Appeal file dealing with IRFAN- Canada. These documents were filed prior to IRFAN-Canada being placed on the Canadian government's list of “listed entities”. RESPONDENT’S MEMORANDUM OF FACT AND LAW APPELLANT’S MEMORANDUM…
The Globe and Mail this morning had an article on the International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy – Canada which is also known as IRFAN – Canada. CRA had revoked the charitable status of IRFAN – Canada. IRFAN – Canada…
Here is the Blumbergs' List of Canada Corporations Act non-profits that need to continue to the CNCA. The federal government as part of its Open Data initiative provides a complete list of Federal corporations (for-profit and non-profit) in XML format. We…
We recently reviewed the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return database for 2012 as part of the Sean Blumberg Transparency Project. We have taken a subset of the 2012 T3010 data to look at only registered charities based in Alberta. …