In the case of Guindon v. The Queen, 2012 TCC 287 the Tax Court of Canada decided that third party penalties under section 163.2 of the Income Tax Act are tantamount to a criminal proceeding and therefore the burden of…
According to the T3010 for 2010 the total long term investments of Canadian registered charities (captured in line 4140) is $14.7 Billion. This is only long term investments and does not include cash, inventory, land and buildings etc. Keep in…
I am looking forward to delivering a presentation at the APRA conference on “Transparency in the Canadian Charity Sector – the T3010 and Beyond” SESSION 2A: Level: General Transparency in the Canadian Charity Sector – the T3010 and Beyond Mark…
Sarah Boesveld of the National Post on Oct 6, 2012 wrote an article “Pray away the gay’: Conversion therapy groups face heat over charity status” which discusses how California has banned “conversion therapy” out of “concerns of LGBT groups who…
CRA has announced that they will be replacing interpretation bulletins with Income Tax Folios. Sounds like boring tax stuff – but it is not. Part of the folio will be “SERIES 7 – CHARITIES AND NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS Folio 1: Charitable…
The Vancouver Sun columnist David Baines has written an article entitled “Controversy swirls over library’s tax receipt issuance”. In that article he is questioning a couple of receipts issued by the RIchmond Public Library that were cumulatively for around $1.2…
We know that there are about 19,000 Federal corporations under the Canada Corporations Act that will need to continue under the new CNCA by October 17, 2014. We are approaching one year since the CNCA was brought in. Non-profits only…
On Wednesday October 3rd, 2012, the Finance Committee of the House of Commons will have a hearing on tax incentives for charitable donations. Here is a copy of the notice and anticipated witnesses. Meeting 75 October 3, 2012 3:30…
I took a look at the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return statistics on foreign activities by Canadian charities for 2010. The total 2010 amount identified by all charities including gifts-in-kind (GIK) is almost $2.7 billion. 299 charities spent more than…
I finally worked out why we have not been that successful in getting rid of those who are involved with charity fraud in Canada. Take a look at this story on CNN. Google search reveals true identity of suspect in…
Here is a list of the CRA Category Codes used to classify Canadian charities. The coding is in many cases of little use. Probably the most useful is the different religious groups. CategoryCode CharityTypeE CharityTypeF DescriptionE DescriptionF 01 Welfare Bien-être…
Legislation has been introduced in Australia to establish the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) which will commence operations on October 1, 2012. It will be interesting to see how the ACNC does. Here is a link to various resources…
I sometimes laugh when I see some of the things that lawyers think are worthy of comment. For example really esoteric cases. Then almost two weeks ago there was an important decision in the extremely backlogged Tax Court of Canada…
In this article we discuss “Should Ontario non-profits or charities be worrying about the Ontario Not-for-Profit Corporations Act (ONCA)?” The short answer is: probably not. The Ontario Not-for-Profit Corporations Act (ONCA) will affect over 50,000 Ontario Corporation Act (OCA) non-profit…
The ONCA received Royal Assent on October 25, 2010. It has not yet come into force. The Ontario Government was targeting implementation of the ONCA for January 1, 2013. Today the Ontario Government announced that their target date for implementation…
The pre-budget submissions to the Finance Committee have been released. A number of the submissions deal with charity issues. Here is a copy of the submission from Blumberg Segal LLP: Here is a list of all the submissions: http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?DocId=5709773&Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=41&Ses=1…
Charity Village recently conducted an interview with Cathy Hawara who is the Director General of the Charities Directorate of CRA. The interview with Cathy Hawara by Andy Levy-Ajzenkopf at Charity Village was published on September 24, 2012 and is located…
Corporations Canada of Industry has advised that CNCA and certain other federal corporations may use either a residential address or another address for the address for service of directors of the corporation. This will allow directors to use a address,…
Here is an article in the Globe and Mail on the revocation of Charity Intelligence for failure to file their T3010 on time entitled “” About 600 charities fail to file their T3010 every year and lose their status…
Here is a recent decision of the Tax Court of Canada in Kossow. After the Marechaux case, Kossow is the most important case on abusive charity gifting tax schemes. The Tax Court of Canada decided “As in Maréchaux, there…
I will be delivering a presentation to the Canada Southern Africa Chamber of Business 2012 8th Risk Mitigation Program in Toronto on October 16, 2012 on the subject of “CSR with Canadian Charities – Opportunities and Pitfalls”. Here is a…
The Canada Revenue Agency revokes the registration of The Canadian Quadraplegic Association as a charity Here is the press release: “The Canada Revenue Agency revokes the registration of The Canadian Quadraplegic Association as a charity Ottawa, Ontario, September 14,…
In February 2012, the Charity Law Information Program (CLIP) had a very successful “Being Good at Doing Good” conference. We had about 250 attendees in Toronto and the conference lasted 2 days. We had some of the top experts from…
Here are two workshops organized by the OCIC entitled “Personal Security: to build an individual’s security capacity when working in risk prone environments” Upcoming Workshops http://www.powersitefactory.com/ocic/Page.asp?IdPage=7895&WebAddress=ocic Registration for the following workshops is now open: Personal Security: to build an individual’s…