Red Ink on the Prairies

A day after Quebec’s Finance Minister Eric Girard brought down a Budget featuring a $6.3 Billion deficit, Saskatchewan’s Finance Minister Jim Reiter tabled his government’s budget on March 19. Next up was Finance Minister Adrian Salas, who tabled the Manitoba Budget on March 24. The common thread: there’s lots of red ink on the Prairies. But that’s where the budget documents differ between Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Here’s the latest tax news and why it matters to the advice you give your clients.

I recently ran across an interesting article published in Knowledge@Wharton (December 9, 2009)[1]. It, in turn, references an article in the medical journal The Lancet, which states that children born since the year 2000 in developed countries will most likely live to be 100 and, in fact, that they will be healthier than elderly people in previous generations.

Leaders of the G-8 countries, including Canada’s Stephen Harper, met in Ireland on Monday June 17th to discuss, among other things, “tax havens”.

Advisors should be aware of and discussing income replacement opportunities with their client families if disability has entered into the picture.

If you have a Registered Disability Saving Plan and are receiving disability assistance payments from the plan, a portion of these payments will be shown in Box 131 of a T4A slip.

An employer may provide employees with the opportunity to purchase shares in the employer’s corporation at some future date, but at a price that is the current market price when the option is granted. 

We continue our Synthetic Dispositions series this week with a look at the short sale of similar or identical property.