We have a number of resources to assist including our online course Receipting for Canadian Registered Charities with an updated Receipting Kit.
If you wish to retain our law firm to assist with your charity or non-profit’s receipting questions, you can contact us.
CRA has noted on the Charities IT Modernization Project (CHAMP) page that internal divisions will be able to access the CRA online system without obtaining a new BN number. In September of 2017 we blogged about developments relating to “head bodies” and…
Last year CRA moved its website from www.cra-arc.gc.ca/chrts-gvng/ to the super cool Ok it was not CRA moving their website but they were dragged kicking and screaming to the Government of Canada website. Giant waste of time and necessitating many…
The Tax Court of Canada in Isah, A. v. The Queen (TCC) deals with donations disallowed by CRA and the court ultimately decided to impose gross negligence penalties on the taxpayer who submitted fake official donation receipts. The Court discuss the test…
P113 – Gifts and Income Tax 2017 is the main CRA publication dealing with gifts and their income tax consequences for Canadian taxpayers. The publication has been revised with some minor changes in 2017. They reflect that the rules for…
Over the last 10 or more years, we have published over 2500 blog posts. Except for a few avid readers, that might be a little overwhelming so we have started to create a directory of some of the top resources…
In our note “CRA Questions on Charities Assisting Those Affected by the Conflict in Syria” it includes some common questions and answers from CRA on charities assisting those affected by the conflict in Syria.
Here is our note “Common Paragraphs for an Administrative Fairness Letter from the Charities Directorate of CRA“. It contains explanations of common concerns that CRA may find during an audit that, unless appropriately addressed, may result in various penalties, sanctions or…
CRA recently released a short video on who is the true donor. These and other short videos are helpful for charities but nothing replaces real in person programs. Unfortunately, CRA has stopped their popular Charities Information Sessions (which were called “Road…
School boards can be registered charities. But school boards can also fit into another category of qualified donee that provides the ability to issue receipts with far less compliance obligations. CRA recently released a letter discussing whether school boards are…
A great deal has been written about legal compliance surrounding charities in Canada. Much of that material, however, is highly specialized, hard to understand, and sometimes esoteric. As a result, it can be difficult for charities, employees, and volunteers to…
Apparently a class action lawsuit has been launched relating to the GLGI scheme. In a press release the lawyers for the plaintiffs note “the commencement of a proposed $800 million class action lawsuit against Global Learning Group Inc. (GLGI), and other individuals and entities…
Canada has an unusually generous system in which foreign universities that have a couple of Canadian students studying there can obtain the equivalent of Canadian registered charity status with almost none of the obligations. Here is an article describing that…
We have just released the Blumbergs’ Snapshot of the Ontario Charity Sector 2015. We recently reviewed the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return database for 2015 as part of the Sean Blumberg Transparency Project. We had previously provided a 2015 overview of the…
[UPDATED RECEIPTING KIT 2018] We have just released our updated Blumbergs' Receipting Kit 2017. The Blumbergs' Receipting Kit 2017 is for Canadian registered charities and other qualified donees who wish to issue official donation receipts under the Income Tax Act (Canada), which…
Mark Blumberg will be delivering two upcoming Chartered Professional Accountants of Ontario (CPA Ontario) charity programs: Charity Fundraising and Receipting Rules – A Primer for Accountants and T3010 and Transparency in the Charitable Sector. Here are the text descriptions of the 2 upcoming…
Although the CRA has little guidance on internal controls, they are increasingly focusing on internal controls, or the lack thereof, in charities. Internal controls are “a procedure or policy put in place by management to safeguard assets, promote accountability, increase efficiency,…
CRA has recently released two new videos as part of their Gifting and Receipting video series. These videos are as follows: Auctions: when you can issue donation receipts and Auctions: advantage and 80% rule. The CRA videos can be…
The New York Times recently had an article Canada Debates Whether Gift of Leibovitz Photos Is Also a Tax Dodge which discusses a donation of photographs taken by Annie Leibovitz. There was also coverage in the CBC, another CBC and Toronto Star.…
The Canada Revenue Agency's website, which includes the Charities Directorate, will apparently be moving to the new www.canada.ca domain on July 11, 2017. The old CRA pages will remain up during the interim period of the move. Hopefully those…
The recent decision of Ploughman v. The Queen, 2017 TCC 64 deals with a “third-party civil penalty” against Mr. Ploughman for his involvement in what CRA refers to as “abusive charity gifting tax shelter” but this decision refers to as…
We have provided two letters recently released by the Canada Revenue Agency. The first letter from CRA discusses the income tax treatment of payments made by a church to a Syrian refugee family. The second letter from CRA discusses whether a registered charity can return…
I recently delivered a webinar to CharityVillage on Charitable Receipting: Do’s and don’ts for Canadian registered charities. If you are interested in seeing the slides or listening to the webinar you can do so at Charitable Receipting: Do’s and don’ts for Canadian…
We are pleased to announce the Blumbergs' Canadian Charity Law Institute 2017 will be on Monday October 16, 2017. Further details will follow. Registration and early bird information is here.
On May 25, 2017, I will be doing a free webinar for CharityVillage on Charitable Receipting Do's and Don'ts which will discuss receipting by Canadian registered charities.