What happens if the parties to a consent to judgment make a mistake in it? The Court in Oram’s Enterprises Limited v R, 2025 TCC 182, found that the functus officio doctrine and the importance of the finality of judgments…
Net worth assessment strategy
The taxpayer bears the onus of refuting a net worth assessment or a similar type of assessment. The author summarizes a number of approaches that have worked in the courts as follows: Adequate records can defeat blunt assessments (Mensah v…
Amended guidance on third-party penalties
The CRA has amended IC01-1R2 (“Third-Party Penalties”) in light of Guindon v R, 2015 SCC 41, and Ploughman v R, 2017 TCC 64. It has confirmed that “culpable conduct” “is defined with reference to the types of conduct the courts…
Related siblings under section 55
At the 2025 APFF conference, the CRA stated that the sisters in the following scenario would be related as per subparagraph 55(5)(e)(i): Sister A and Sister B each owned 100 percent of the shares of their respective holding corporations, whose…
Subsection 55(2) can be good actually
If subsection 55(2) applies to a dividend, and the cash related to the dividend needs to be paid to an individual shareholder anyway, the shareholder will likely be better off compared to the situation obtained when the subsection does not…
Loans by a partnership to a partner
The CRA has generally held that a loan from a partnership to a partner will reduce the ACB of the partner’s partnership interest because of the “all-encompassing” language in subparagraph 53(2)(c)(v) of the Income Tax Act (Canada). The CRA has…
Directors of a dissolved corporation
In 2008, I wrote an article for the Hamilton Law Association Journal that, among other things, addressed the status of directors of a corporation that has been dissolved. I referred to Leger v R, 2007 TCC 322, which held that,…
DAC Investment
The authors discuss R v DAC Investment Holdings Inc., 2026 FCA 35, rev’g 2024 TCC 63. They conclude that, in a GAAR analysis, an overly-broad characterization of a provision or a mere description of its effect will not correctly express its object, spirit and purpose…
Limits on CRA demands for information
In Canada (National Revenue) v Cohen, 2025 FC 2012, the Court dismissed a Crown application for a compliance order because the taxpayer had demonstrated, on a balance of probabilities, that he had done everything reasonably possible to obtain the documents…
Post-mortem bumps and grandchildren
The bump under ITA paragraph 88(1)(d) could be denied if a “specified shareholder” receives bumped property unless the shareholder was also a “specified person” as defined in paragraph 88(1)(c.2). Grandchildren who receive bumped property could taint the bump if they…