A final report entitled “Evaluation of the Tax Policy Branch” has been prepared by the Internal Audit and Evaluation of the Dept. of Finance. Those interested in tax policy may find it interesting. Here is a copy of the report: …
The CFC 2013 Conference will be held in Winnipeg. I will be delivering a presentation on dealing with non-qualified donees. In honour of the conference and as part of the Sean Blumberg Transparency Project we have prepared some statistical information…
Corporations Canada, under Industry Canada, has started sending out default notices to organizations that are under the new CNCA but have not filed their Form 4022 – Annual Return. The Annual Return is quite easy to complete. Here is a…
The CRA has been sending out a “Notice of Filing Omission” to charities who don’t file their financial statements with the T3010. This is an important reminder that you don’t have to just file the T3010 – you also need…
In January, CRA released a revised T4033 Guide which we blogged on earlier, which assists Canadian registered charities with completing the Registered Charity Information Return.. Now they have slightly revised the T4033 again. The most recent version of the guide…
Statistics Canada has recently released donor information for 2011. Every year Stats Can puts out this information and people write about it. Stats Can notes: “Charitable donations reported by taxfilers increased 2.6% from 2010 to just under $8.5 billion in…
We recently reviewed the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return database for 2011 as part of the Sean Blumberg Transparency Project. The database covers 82,000 of the 86,000 registered charities in Canada that had filed their T3010 and were processed into…
The Charities Directorate has just published a new page which sets out how members of the public can obtain information about registered charities. Here is the link to the CRA page: Here is the text of the CRA page…
I have been concerned that it is not easy for people interested in Ontario non-profit and charity sector to obtain information on Ontario non-profit corporations. With the Federal government the information is available online and free. I have been requesting…
Today the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance (FINA) released its much anticipated report on Tax Incentives for Charitable Giving in Canada. The report discuss “Charitable Donations and Donors in Canada”, “The Regulation of Charities”, “Tax Incentives and their…
In this article entitled “Atheist Activist Group Sues IRS Over ‘Preferential Treatment of Churches’” in the Christian News Network it discusses the exemption that churches having to filing the US form 990 and how one group is challenging that preferential…
Here is an interesting article entitled “Watchdog Cracks Down on Misleading Statements on Fundraising Costs” Watchdog Cracks Down on Misleading Statements on Fundraising Costs
Here is an important article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy outlining an initiative to try and have charities electronically file their annual returns in the US and have this information more easily accessible online at no charge. Although Canadian charities…
I missed this article by Vancouver Sun columnist David Baines last summer entitled “Baines: Couple who cheated tax department suffer litany of woes: Chartered accountant Martin Johnson and estranged wife Celia Martin failed to declare fees earned on art donation”. …
The T3010 is a great resource on the Canadian charity sector. We recently reviewed the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return database for 2011 as part of the Sean Blumberg Transparency Project. The database covers 82,848 of the approximately 86,000 registered…
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The Charity Commission of England and Wales has put out a statement on a major scheme involving UK Gift Aid. From a Canadian perspective it is interesting to see the Charity Commission dealing with this sort of abuse. In Canada,…
The Charities Directorate has released a new T3010 (13) Registered Charity Information Return for Canadian registered charities with fiscal year ends after January 1, 2013. The changes on the T3010 (13) are basically more questions about the political activities of…
CRA’s Guidance on political activities was updated in December 2012. There are some minor changes to reflect changes to the disbursement quota and recent budgets including the 2012 Federal Budget dealing with political activities and Canadian charities. The CRA had…
Here is a copy of a memo marked “Secret” and attachments from the Department of Finance on Finance released under Freedom of Information dealing with “Registered Charities – Political Activities, Foreign Funding and Transparency”. It may take a minute to…
We recently reviewed the private foundations contained on the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return for 2011. In this case we looked at the approximately 500 private foundations on the database who had the greatest total expenditures according to their T3010…
We recently reviewed the T3010 information for 2011. The database was prepared by the Charities Directorate of CRA in September 2012 and covers about 81,000 charities (94% of Canadian registered charities) and their 2011 T3010 returns. Here is the article…
We recently reviewed the T3010 information for 2011. The database was prepared by the Charities Directorate of CRA in September 2012 and covers about 81,000 charities (94% of Canadian registered charities) and their 2011 T3010 returns. Canadian registered charities are…
The Vancouver Sun published a story today entitled “Rick Hansen ‘donated’ rights to his name to his foundation, received $1.8-million tax receipt: Canada Revenue Agency says the 2009 donation does not qualify as a gift and the foundation must cancel…