Registered Charities Newsletter No. 33 was just released by the CRA today. It has some very useful information on receipting. Also CRA will be accepting submissions with respect to the fundraising guidance before April 2010. If you have ideas for…
On December 3, 2009 there was a Third Reading of the Good Government Bill (C-212) and it was carried and the bill passed. Royal Assent was given to the Good Government Act, 2009 on December 15, 2009 and therefore the…
Whether a staff person is an employee or independent contractor is an important distinction that can have huge ramifications for charities and their boards of directors. To understand CRA’s position you should review RC4110 Employee or Self-employed? at http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/tg/rc4110/ Charities…
Whether a staff person is an employee or independent contractor is an important distinction that can have huge ramifications for charities and their boards of directors. To understand CRA’s position you should review RC4110 Employee or Self-employed? at http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/tg/rc4110/ Charities…
UJA Federation of Greater Toronto Invites you to attend a CHARITY LAW SEMINAR for Jewish communal organizations ……………………………………………….. Thursday, January 14, 2010 Lipa Green Centre | 4600 Bathurst Street Tamari Family Hall (Free Parking) Registration: 8:30 a.m. Program: 9:00 a.m.…
The Standing Committee on Finance released its Pre-Budget Consultations 2009 and it is located at The Report, tabled in the House on Wednesday, December 9, 2009. Below are excerpts relating to charities. For the full text see below. V.…
I am so excited and it is not that I am going away on vacation today for a week. The new T3010B Registered Charity Information Return, which is filed by Canadian charities for fiscal year ends beginning January 1, 2009…
Here is a copy of my presentation CRA’s Fundraising Guidelines –Legal, Ethical and Practical Issues A presentation to the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) GTA Congress 2009 in Toronto Mark Blumberg is a lawyer at Blumberg Segal LLP in Toronto,…
CRA announced that “Enhancements have been made to the Alphabetical index of topics, including the addition of summary policies (CSPs).” You can find the Alphabetical Index of Topics at
An article I wrote entitled “CRA Guidance on Fundraising: AN OPPORTUNITY TO IMPROVE FUNDRAISING PRACTICES IN THE SECTOR” was published in PERSPECTIVES ON CANADIAN PHILANTHROPY by the Offord Group. The publication can be downloaded from Mark Blumberg is a…
In Registered Charities Newsletter No. 24 Summer 2005 the CRA discusses the status of certain First Nations groups as qualified donees. The qualified donee status is important as organizations that are qualified donees can issue “official donation receipts”. If you…
I am often asked “When should a Canadian charity not issue a “official donation receipt” (tax receipt)?” First of all Canadian charities do not have to issue tax receipts – however, if they are going to issue official donation receipts,…
I recently attended the Interaction Forum held in Washington, D.C. on July 6-9, 2009. The Interaction Forum is the largest gathering of US ngos involved with development. I met some very interesting people and learned quite a lot. Here are…
Karim Harji and his team of bloggers at www.socialfinance.ca cover everything from CSR to social enterprise to philanthropy. They are trying to expand the development of a social finance marketspace in Canada.
Valuation is complicated but don’t rely on the donor to tell you the value or use some optimistic number. If a charity provides an official donation receipt for a donation of pharmaceuticals to a donor that charity is obliged to…
Google has lots of free tools. Here is one tool that costs money but that google is giving to some Canadian charities for free and it is “Google Adwords” through their google grants program. Here is the Google blurb:…
You can find the Nantel v. The Queen (TCC) decision in French at According to the headnote it involved the valuation of a donation to a charity of a number of pieces of art that were bought by the…
An article entitled Jewish Ethical Perspective to American Taxation by Kenneth H. Ryesky provides a Jewish law perspective on the US tax system. Many of the points made here would be equally applicable to the Canadian tax and registered charity…
After the new Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act comes into force (probably around 2011) Canadian federal charities under the Canada Corporations Act that wish to continue existing will have a further three years to continue (essentially to covert) under the new…
No. The new Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act requires that corporations have members however the board of directors and the members can be identical as is often the case with Canadian charities. For further information see a paper entitled Insight on…
I am not even going to try to answer this issue. I tried before to deal with Subsection 16(3) and got the answer wrong. I am excerpting a piece from a paper entitled Insight on C-4, the New Canada Not-for-profit…
The New Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act while passed has not come into force yet. The experts best guess (see Wayne Gray below) is early 2011 for it coming into force. “The sector’s plea for a modern NFP corporate statute has…
CRA’s Guidance “Fundraising by Registered Charities” is in two separate documents namely the main guidance at and (entitled Additional information on Guidance CPS-028, Fundraising by Registered Charities). These documents are hyperlinked together and you can go back and…
Here is an OP ED piece by the finance director of Oxfam UK. There is also a response from the UK TaxPayers’ Alliance in the comments section. From The Times November 27, 2009 “Transparency and accountability are crucial for…