Time’s Up: CRA’s 100 Day Mandate for Improvement

After years of frustration on the part of tax professionals and taxpayers alike, the Finance Minister ordered the Canada Revenue Agency to clean up its act in 100 days. Specifically, the improvement plan was to run from September 2 through December 11. Finance Minister and Minister of National Revenue, Francoise-Phillippe Champagne instructed CRA to fix “unacceptable wait times and service delays.” Time’s up this week and CRA has released an update on progress. What gets measured, gets done. Let’s see what CRA’s metrics show. 

Drawing up inter-spousal investment loans are a legitimate way for the higher-income spouse to transfer taxable investment income to their lower-income spouse to reduce the family tax bill. For several years now, the prescribed rate for spousal loans has been set at 1% but that may be changing shortly.

On September 13, the Minister of Finance, Jim Flaherty, confirmed reports that the Canada GEN Investment Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Canada Development Investment Corporation, sold 30 million common stock General Motors (GM) shares to BofA Merill Lynch and RBC Capital Markets in an unregistered block trade. 

Canadian full-time students in undergraduate programs paid 3.3% more on average in tuition fees for the 2013/2014 academic year this fall than they did a year earlier.

It’s expensive to get an education, so investing in careers that “count” both financially and for your lifestyle in the future is important.

The Tax Court of Canada (TCC) recently considered whether a graduate student performing research at the University of British Columbia was an employee for the purposes of subsection 5(1) of the Employment Insurance Act.

Finding a tax advisor to take your family into a tax-efficient future is important.