John Oakey

Total 34 Posts

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National Tax Director for Baker Tilly Canada. John has extensive experience with Canadian corporate and personal income taxes with specialization in the areas of corporate reorganizations, estate planning, succession planning and tax compliance. He also has significant experience dealing with GST/HST issues and U.S. citizen cross-border tax reporting issues.

Company purification – don’t take the short-cut

If a business is successful, it will eventually have excess cash retained in the company that is not necessary for the operations of the business.  Two options for this cash is to distribute the excess to the shareholder(s) as a dividend, but that would result in personal tax being paid by the shareholder on the dividend or the company can simply retain the excess cash and invest it in non-business-related….

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Tax Issues

No plan is usually not the best plan

When faced with making decisions, doing nothing is an option and for some decisions that could be the most viable option. However, In the world of estate planning, doing nothing rarely turns out to be a good idea. We can all point to an example of executing a deceased’s estate gone wrong.  Most times a disastrous estate situation could have been avoided or mitigated if the deceased would have done….

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Estate Planning, Wills

Bill C-208 the race to the finish line

Bill C-208 (Bill), “an Act to amend the Income Tax Act (transfer of small business or family farm or fishing corporation)” is a private member’s bill introduced by Conservative MP, Larry Maguire[1] on February 19, 2020.  The purpose of this Bill is to allow share capital restructurings and inter-generational transfers within a family unit, which are sometimes caught by two prominent anti-avoidance provisions in the Income Tax Act (ITA), Sections 55….

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Business Succession Planning, Tax Issues

Death, taxes and cryptocurrency

Everyone knows that you can’t avoid the tax collector, and death is no exception.  Under the Canadian Income Tax Act, on the death of an individual subsection 70(5) will trigger a deemed disposition of all the deceased taxpayer’s capital property at fair market value thus taxing any accrued capital gains in the deceased’s final tax return.  There is an exception to this deemed disposition rule which will defer the taxation….

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Estate Planning, Executors, Tax Issues

Taxable preferred shares and estates – say what?

The tax reform of 1987 introduced the term “taxable preferred shares”[1] to curtail the tax advantage for non-taxpaying corporations using preferred share financing over debt financing. The result of this reform subjected the non-taxpaying corporation to a (current) 25 per cent tax on dividends that were paid on taxable preferred shares in excess of a specified dividend allowance.  This tax imposed under the Income Tax Act is referred to as….

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Estate Planning, Tax Issues, Trusts

Bequeathing qualifying shares: to trust or not to trust

Use of spousal trust or common-law partner trusts Setting up a spousal or common-law partner trust is a very important decision that generally results from non-tax reasons. One of the common reasons for setting up this type of trust is to protect the surviving spouse from influencers who might try to gain access to the surviving spouse’s inherited assets. The set-up of a spousal or common-law partner trust can provide….

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Business Succession Planning, Estate Planning, Small Business, Spouse, Succession Planning, Trusts
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