Tax Issues

Total 360 Posts

Inheritance and Tax

There is renewed discussion on whether Canada will become another jurisdiction where specific gift or estate taxes will be imposed on inheritances. There is speculation that the discussion will lead to something concrete as early as next week’s Federal Budget. In the meantime, there are situations where inheritances can come with a tax burden, such as the one described in a recent Tax Court of Canada case (Goldman v. the….

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Attorney Compensation, Canada Revenue Agency, Compensation, Costs, Courts, Estate Administration, Estate Administration and Probate Applications, Estate Litigation, Executors, Investments, Liability, Tax Issues, Trustee, Trustee Compensation, Trusts, Uncategorized

Tax returns for deceased persons

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) will occasionally post requests to help improve the Agency’s processing efficiency. Recent posts caught my attention given their application to returns for deceased individuals. Date of Death The CRA noticed that tax preparers occasionally include a deceased person’s date of death on the living spouse’s tax return. This may result in the CRA mistakenly recording the living spouse as deceased. This error can cause major….

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Canada Revenue Agency, Executors, Tax Issues, Uncategorized

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

Death Benefit Payments

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) recently released a translated technical interpretation with helpful guidance on the tax treatment of a death benefit payment in certain specific situations. A death benefit is income of either the estate or the beneficiary who receives it. Up to $10,000 of the total of all death benefits paid (other than CPP or QPP death benefits) is not taxable. The CRA had the following to say….

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Canada Revenue Agency, Estate Planning, Executors, Small Business, Tax Issues

Professional fees incurred in the context of a litigation with CRA

On occasion, the personal representative of an estate may have to incur costs to either settle or disclose a matter with the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). In a translated technical interpretation, the CRA provided some of its own guidance on how to navigate the relevant rule in the Income Tax Act (ITA). The ITA generally permits a deduction in computing a taxpayer’s income for a taxation year for amounts paid….

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Canada Revenue Agency, Costs, Estate Administration, Executors, Tax Issues, Trustee

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
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