Amit Ummat has written a good article about Glatt v Canada (National Revenue), 2019 FC 738. The taxpayer was assessed a preparer penalty. To reduce risk, the taxpayer paid the assessed amount, which was later reversed, but without interest on…
Burden of proof
Owen J, in Morrison v R, 2018 TCC 220, writes the following about the burden of proof relating to the Minister’s assumptions: The Federal Court of Appeal makes two important points in these decisions [Transocean Offshore Ltd. v R,…
Informal procedure appeals
Craig Burley has written a helpful article about a technicality relating to the $25,000 limit for informal procedure appeals to the Tax Court of Canada. He refers to Maier v R, 1994 CarswellNat 3242, T.C.J. No. 1260 (TCC), in…
Extension of time
A taxpayer fails to meet the 90-day deadline for filing an appeal to the Tax Court apparently because he was badly advised by a professional about procedural matters. Should the Court grant his application to late-file the appeal? The Federal Court of Appeal said ‘yes’ in Bygrave v R, 2017 FCA 124.
What is a nil assessment?
In Shreedhar v R, 2016 TCC 254, the Crown brought a motion to strike an informal procedure appeal. The Crown claimed that the taxpayer was attempting to appeal from a nil assessment. The Court disagreed because, while the assessment had…
The Shadow of the Torturer
Mr Douglas McCarthy participated in the Fiscal Arbitrators fiasco. His lawyer, as part of some pre-trial skirmishing, tried to argue, among other things, that Mr McCarthy shouldn’t have to answer questions on examinations-for-discovery because the discovery process amounts to torture.…
TCC and FCA odds
From H.M. Dolson, “What To Expect in Tax Adjudication”, Canadian Tax Highlights 23:4 (April 2015): As a whole, a general procedure taxpayer represented by counsel achieved a meaningful victory in 38.5 percent of the published TCC decisions and…
Burden of proof and gross negligence
In Brown v R, 2014 FCA 301, Webb JA had no trouble dismissing the taxpayer’s claim that the Income Tax Act (Canada) was void for uncertainty because, for example, it did not provide an adequate definition of “person”. The Court,…
Loss Carrybacks and Reassessments
Alex Klyguine reminds us that, if the CRA reassesses a year and the taxpayer wishes to dispute the reassessment, the taxpayer must be cautious about applying losses of other years to reduce the taxable income of the reassessed year. If…
Guilty pleas and the Tax Court
James Rhodes, in a recent post on the Canadian Tax Professionals group on LinkedIn, drew our attention to McIntrye v R, 2014 TCC 111, in which Justice Diane Campbell, among other things, found that the CRA was not bound by an agreed statement of facts (ASF) arrived at as part of a plea bargain and that the CRA, in assessing the taxpayers, was not required to make assumptions that were consistent with the ASF.