I’ll admit that email disclaimers are a pet peeve of mine. They seem to embody some of the less loveable characteristics of lawyers and the law. Anyway, apparently the IRS is now telling US tax practitioners to stop using “Circular…
Bank-assisted tax evasion?
The CBC is reporting that “British bank HSBC helped hundreds of Canadians hide Swiss accounts from authorities to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes, CBC News has learned.”
MGS on strike?
The following is from an OPSEU press release issued last week: The union representing 35,000 frontline Ministry employees who work directly for the Ontario government announced today that bargaining representatives of the Ontario Government have taken a significant step towards…
Detax rising?
I’ve been writing about detaxers for sometime. You would have thought their nonsense had been exposed long ago, not least because the tax courts have had no trouble dismissing their claims. Apparently not, however. The Canadian Bar Association is actually…
The rectification saga
The rectification saga continues. From Timothy Fitzsimmons’ summary of Fairmont Hotels Inc. et al v AG (Canada), 2014 ONSC 7302: Fairmont relied on the Ontario Court of Appeal decision in Juliar for the principle that the exact method to achieve…
Estate freezes and accounting
KPMG reports that If you’re a business owner and you have carried out an estate freeze to fix the value of your shares in the business so that future growth accrues to the benefit of other family members, you may…
HST and damages
Greg Sawatsky has written a helpful summary of the HST rules applying to certain payments of damages.
Brogan
Craig Burley has written a brief summary of Canada (Atty-General) v Brogan Family Trust, 2014 ONSC 6354, a recent case on rectification. I’m skeptical of the idea that the CRA has no interest in a rectification application if it is…
HST diversion
The CRA just tweeted “Is the GST number on your invoice valid? Find out by using the GST/HST registry at http://t.co/LCmyRdCTqQ #GST #HST”. I’ve posted about the registry before, but why would you bother to check? You would care because,…
Tax preparer punishment
Here’s some good news for a change: “Tax preparer given an 18-month conditional sentence and a $377,024 fine for filing false tax returns.” I’ve seen too many cases where unscrupulous preparers file false returns for clueless taxpayers who are left…