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. 

What can an advisor who has the usual mix of clients learn from a family office business serving the ultra high net worth? A lot, according to Terry Jenkins, president of BMO Private Bank, U.S., in Chicago and a speaker at this year’s Distinguished Advisor Conference.

Statistics Canada released revised data on the income of Canadian households for 1981 though 2010.

  If you are in British Columbia you are probably aware that on the 31st of May 2012, the legislative assembly of BC passed Bill 54 to re-implement the provincial sales tax (PST) in the province, alongside the goods and services tax (GST), ridding the province of the much-criticized harmonized sales tax (HST).

Back in the early 1970s, tax reform, which largely introduced the taxation framework we still live with, considered whether the family, including dependants living in the home, should be taxed as one unit on one tax return.

A recent Tax Court of Canada (TCC) decision, in Sutcliffe v The Queen, contains some interesting information regarding that court’s jurisdiction, specifically to its inability to decide whether source deductions have been taken or not.

Those holding stock in the Kraft Foods Group Inc were surprised, to say the least, when on Thursday October 4th the Kraft shares opened at $45.55 then surged to $58.54. The Nasdaq attributed the rapid change to “broker error.” This occurred only days after Kraft Foods and Mondelez International, a former part of Kraft foods began trading as two separate companies.