There was a recent Globe and Mail article “CRA typo causes a multimillion-dollar mistake for the Hewitt Foundation“. This article is a reminder of the importance of the T3010. It is used by many different groups, not only regulators. This…
Recently the Future of Good had an article written by Gabe Oatley entitled Investigation: Ontario Trillium Foundation ‘Muzzled’ Charities with Changes to Advocacy Policy. The article raises two primary questions – does the OTF refuse to fund groups who are…
I saw some interesting questions posed by Ken Wyman relating to advocacy on LinkedIn. Ken, who is a well-known fundraising expert, has always been interested in advocacy and he shared his list with us. Canadian non-profits and charities often don’t…
Here is the Blumbergs Snapshot of the British Columbia Charity Sector 2021. We recently reviewed the T3010 Registered Charity Information Return database for 2021 as part of the Sean Blumberg Transparency Project. The database covers about 30,354 of the approximately…
Here is a letter from CRA dealing with a charity that provides a municipality (qualified donee) with funds. Depending on how the funds are provided, they may not be recognized as a gift under the ITA. With the changes in…
We recently posted the CRA letters and charity response relating to the revocation of Brightline Foundation. The CRA concerns with the charity relate to the valuation of certain publicly listed shares. Here is an excerpt from one CRA letter: Fair…
In Werstein, A. v. The King (TCC) it deals with false statements relating to business expenses and CRA imposing a penalty. The court notes “To promote taxpayer honesty in Canada’s self-assessing tax system, subsection 163(2) permits the Minister to impose…
Ebert v. His Majesty the King deals with certain tax receipts issued by charities for donations of wine relating to the 2005-2007 taxation years. The motions deal with assumptions made by CRA relating to valuation which the donors questioned. The…
In Herring v. The Queen and related cases, the appeals of a number of different people who had ‘invested’ in the Banyan Tree Foundation’s ‘leveraged donation program’ were dismissed. These investments, what CRA used to call “abusive charity gifting tax…
We had previously posted the Notice of Intention to revoke for Colel Chabad Lubavitch Foundation of Israel. I just noticed that there was also a Federal Court of Appeal decision in COLEL CHABAD LUBAVITCH FOUNDATION OF ISRAEL v. MINISTER OF…
On May 11, 2023, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed an application for leave to appeal in the case of Fortius Foundation v. M.N.R., with costs. Apparently, there was a motion to adduce fresh evidence and that was granted. We…
We recently received a copy of an Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) disclosure package from CRA for The Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation. Here is a brief description of the ATIP request: CRA ATIP final disclosure package relating to The…
Some foundations in Canada and around the world have been grappling with their place and its impact. There is an initiative called Trust Creates Impact. “#TrustCreatesImpact is an initiative whose members reflect on and shape the future of foundations and…
We received a note from CRA that they have updated their T3010 forms to include the questions on the new qualifying disbursement regime. In other words, if a Canadian charity makes a grant to a grantee that is a non-qualified…
I really don’t like blogging on a charity twice in one day but hard to ignore a CBC headline “Former Trudeau Foundation head says past leadership misled Canadians on Chinese donation.” The article by Steven Chase and Robert Fife of…
There are lots of criticisms of the Trudeau Foundation. Some are ridiculous, but that does not mean that there are not some serious problems with the governance of the Trudeau Foundation. For those who think that the Foundation does some…
With changes in May 2019 in which CRA removed about 10 years of public information from the Charities Listing, the differences between the CRA’s Charities Listing and the Blumbergs’ CharityData.ca portal have grown. This article will try to show you…
There is horrible news coming out of Kenya where a Christian religious cult told followers they would go to heaven if they starved themselves to death. About 89 bodies have so far been recovered. While this particular event may be…
Over the last decade, we have provided to the public CRA letters relating to a number of Canadian registered charity revocations. These letters from CRA cover many different grounds for de-registration. Some relate to relatively minor matters such as an…
Many Ontario non-profit corporations are struggling with how to deal with the Ontario Not-for-Profit Corporations Act, 2010 (“ONCA”). Over 50,000 ONCA corporations will need to make changes to their governing documents to conform with the new ONCA by October 18,…
This is an update to a post we did earlier on this story. CBC recently had a further story entitled Head of charitable foundation ordered to pay nearly $434K for orchestrating Bolivian bank investment scheme. CBC notes: A Manitoba Securities…
The Public Service Alliance of Canada is on strike as of April 19, 2023, and this affects the Charities Directorate of CRA. Although the media is discussing the strike, as is typically the case, there is little attention paid to…
Under the Income Tax Act (Canada) certain Indigenous groups can be recognized as qualified donees as “Municipal or public bodies performing a function of government”. In most cases, pursuing qualified donee status as a municipal or public body performing a function…
This week, I did a webinar for the Canadian Charity Law Association on The Ontario Not-for-Profit Corporations Act (“ONCA”) – options for dealing with this important corporate change. While we usually don’t record and provide recordings of these events, here…