Blumbergs is pleased to announce that we will be hosting Blumbergs’ Canadian Charity Law Boot Camp again on Monday, April 20, 2020. An easy enough date to remember! This is a one-day boot camp on compliance and standards issues for…
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…
The list of municipal or public bodies performing a function of government in Canada registered as qualified donees has grown to 462. It is predominantly indigenous bands but also has some other groups such as school boards. Here is the…
Journalism has been under a lot of stress for many years. The Trudeau government has proposed a number of complicated and convoluted initiatives to ostensibly support journalism. One of them was to have a qualified donees category of “registered journalism…
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We recently put online CRA letters to registered charities that had been revoked over the last few years as a result of audit.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. …
We are watching as Covid-19 spreads across the world and there have been a number of cases in Canada. The situation is fluid and it is important that Canadian charities pay attention. Depending on how the Covid-19 virus plays out…
Statistics Canada reported, “While fewer Canadian tax filers made charitable donations in 2018, they were more generous than in 2017.” They noted that “Total donations claimed on tax returns rose 3.9% in 2018 to just under $10.0 billion. While this…
I recently looked at a couple of ATIP documents from the Charities Directorate and I was quite surprised at the decline in the number of charity applications that CRA is accepting. These statistics go back to 2000. What we see…
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…
The Canadian Lawyer has an article Class action certified for “sham” charitable donation tax scheme. It discusses the class action lawsuit against a number of defendants dealing with the “Global Learning Gifting Initiative Charitable Donation Program” and how that class…
Here is our article “Some initial issues for a new Canadian grantmaking foundation“. Hopefully, it will provide some ideas as to issues that new (and perhaps existing) foundations should be considering. Also, here is our more comprehensive Canadian Charity Legal…
On January 7, 2020, I got another update from the Ontario government on ONCA. I warn you for those who read my blogs that the update does not really update anything but here it goes …. Sent on behalf…
Mark Blumberg will be speaking on top compliance issues and transparency with investments at the 17th Annual Foundation, Endowment and Not for Profit Investment Summit (January 22-23, 2020) 4:25 PM (January 22) Navigating the Top Compliance Issues Facing Canadian Foundations…
We all see from the media the terrible wildfires in Australia. Some Canadian donors or charities have wanted to assist with the relief and recovery efforts as well as research and prevention. Here are a few thoughts specific to the…
The Wall Street Journal on January 8, 2020 in an opinion piece entitled “The War on Philanthropy: Private giving achieves what government can’t—which is why authoritarians hate it” basically provides an unabashed defence of philanthropy and response to those who…
If a University is outside of Canada and on a special list maintained by CRA then that foreign university can issue Canadian “official donation receipts” under the Income Tax Act or tax receipts which are very valuable to Canadian taxpayers. …
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…
Here is our article Corporations Canada Launches Changes to Fees and Service Standard Times and New Express Services Today. There is some very exciting news in that article.
The Washington Post recently had an article entitled “Mormon Church has misled members on $100 billion tax-exempt investment fund, whistleblower alleges” The Washington Post article notes: A former investment manager alleges in a whistleblower complaint to the Internal Revenue Service…
It is now the giving season. We will hear lots from charities on Giving Tuesday and perhaps you will be inundated with too many emails on Giving Tuesday from charities that you rarely hear from! The media will be full…