Tax & Trade Blog

In our previous blog, we discussed the Federal Court of Appeal’s decision in Canada v. Cameco Corporation (“Cameco”) which considered the CRA’s broad audit powers in paragraph 231.1(1)(a) of the Income Tax Act (“ITA”) (and/or 286 of the Excise Tax Act(“ETA”)), ultimately holding that a request for oral interviews was outside of the scope of those powers. Recently, the Federal Court (the “FC”) in Canada (National Revenue) v. Miller (“Miller”) considered the Cameco decision and the same ITA provisions but this time with respect to CRA’s use of Requests for Information (“RFIs”) to compel taxpayers to provide information that ought to be in the taxpayer’s books and records – even if it was not recorded/diarized there. In Miller, the FC upheld the CRA’s use of RFIs as within the scope of legislation, and issued a compliance order.

The Government of Ontario has now made a long-hoped for change to the Ontario Business Corporations Act (“OBCA”) removing the director residency requirement effective July 5, 2021.

This means that corporations incorporated or continued into Ontario no longer need to have any Canadian resident directors and will help put Ontario on a level playing field with provinces like British Columbia which have been without a director residency requirement for nearly two decades!

Section 182 of the Excise Tax Act (“ETA”) generally deems any payment made to a registrant as a consequence of a breach, modification, or cancellation of an agreement (other than as consideration for a supply), to be a taxable supply. This rule, in effect, means that where there is a breach of an agreement to supply property or services, a payment to the supplier by the recipient to compensate for that breach will generally be deemed to include GST/HST.

Unfortunately, section 182 is often overlooked by parties resolving legal disputes, as the recent Tax Court of Canada (“TCC”) decision in THD Inc. c. La Reine, 2018 CCI 147 demonstrates.