Taxpayers nonetheless preventing CRA over COVID advantages and shedding

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Taxpayers present up in federal courtroom virtually each week hoping to hold on to their COVID-19 advantages after being discovered ineligible by the Canada Income Company, however they’re normally unsuccessful.

In virtually all instances, the taxpayer merely doesn’t meet the qualification standards or their proof strains credulity. Earlier than delving into the small print of a current case, right here’s a fast refresher of the principles.

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The Canada Emergency Response Profit (CERB) and its alternative, the Canada Restoration Profit (CRB), had been the 2 important COVID-19 advantages accessible to people. The CERB was provided for any four-week interval between March 15, 2020, and Oct. 3, 2020. To be eligible, an applicant needed to reveal that they had earnings of no less than $5,000 from (self-)employment earnings in 2019 or within the 12 months previous their first software.

The CERB was changed by the CRB, which grew to become accessible for any two-week interval between Sept. 27, 2020, and Oct. 23, 2021, for eligible workers and self-employed staff who suffered a lack of earnings as a result of pandemic.

CRB’s eligibility standards had been just like CERB in that they required, amongst different issues, that the person had earned no less than $5,000 in (self-)employment earnings in 2019, 2020 or in the course of the 12 months previous the date of their software.

The CERB and CRB advantages are mostly chosen for evaluate by the CRA when it’s unclear if the taxpayer earned no less than $5,000 of earnings in a previous qualifying interval.

The commonest sorts of qualifying earnings are employment or self-employment (that’s, enterprise) earnings, however the CRA has accepted that non-eligible dividends (typically these paid out of company earnings taxed on the small enterprise charge) can depend in direction of the minimal $5,000 in earnings required for eligibility since enterprise homeowners have flexibility in how they pay themselves (wage or dividends).

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It was the difficulty of dividends that grew to become an issue within the present case, which concerned a taxpayer who utilized for and obtained CERB advantages from March 15, 2020, to Sept. 26, 2020, and CRB advantages from Sept. 27, 2020, to the top of October 2021.

The CRA concluded the taxpayer was not eligible for the advantages as a result of he didn’t earn no less than $5,000 from employment or self-employment for 2019, 2020, 2021 (as relevant), or in the course of the 12 months previous the date on which he submitted his purposes.

The taxpayer disagreed and in the end took the matter to Federal Courtroom, looking for a judicial evaluate of the CRA’s selections to disclaim him the advantages.

As with prior judicial evaluate instances, the function of the federal courtroom is to not conclude whether or not or not the taxpayer was really eligible for advantages, however fairly to find out, in gentle of the proof and arguments that had been introduced to the CRA, whether or not the company’s resolution to disclaim the advantages was “cheap.”

Within the years previous to evaluate, the taxpayer ran a specialised publishing enterprise, primarily geared toward professionals and contractors within the architectural area. Through the pandemic, a paper scarcity had a major impression on his skill to print, and numerous printing homes had been pressured to stop operations. He tried to transform his publication to a digital one as a way to mitigate the results, however his revenues plummeted.

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Though his enterprise had by no means been worthwhile save for one yr up to now, the taxpayer claimed to have obtained $7,000 in dividends from his firm in 2020. On a private degree, the taxpayer additionally by no means declared any private earnings apart from the $7,000 in dividends declared for 2020. This $7,000 in dividends got here below CRA scrutiny attributable to a sequence of financial institution transfers forwards and backwards between his registered retirement financial savings plan (RRSP), himself and his company.

The taxpayer testified that he withdrew $10,000 from his RRSP in December 2019 with the plan to switch it to his enterprise checking account as a way to “decrease his enterprise debt ratio … to make it eligible for a grant.”

In line with the financial institution statements he supplied, he transferred $10,000 from his private checking account on Jan. 4, 2020, to his company’s account. On the identical day, the company then transferred the $10,000 again to him. Three days later, he wrote a cheque for a similar quantity to his brother.

The corporate’s accounting data confirmed that the switch of $10,000 was thought of a fee of $3,000 to his spouse for “writing,” and the $7,000 to the taxpayer was labeled merely as “Withdrawals – Homeowners.”

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In his 2020 earnings tax return, the taxpayer reported this $7,000 as dividend earnings, however didn’t file a T5 slip from the corporate exhibiting the dividend. The company didn’t produce a 2020 T5 slip till Sept. 12, 2023, following requests from the CRA and its concern that the 2020 “dividend” was “problematic.”

The choose mentioned that below Canada’s self-reporting tax system, the onus is on the taxpayer to offer ample proof to assist their software for COVID-19 advantages, and the CRA is entitled to ask the taxpayer to offer extra paperwork or data to show their eligibility past a tax return.

That is supported by earlier jurisprudence, which has discovered that the CRA just isn’t required to solely depend on a tax return, however also can think about the proof as an entire, which can embody invoices and buyer fee receipts, in addition to data accessible by the company’s inside data.

Based mostly on the sequence of transactions between the taxpayer’s private checking account and his enterprise account previous to the fee of the dividend, in addition to that the T5 slip was solely accomplished retroactively in September 2023 following a request from the CRA, the company felt the proof was “not sufficiently credible” to reveal that he had earned ample earnings to satisfy the earnings eligibility requirement.

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The choose agreed, concluding that the CRA’s selections to disclaim the advantages had been “cheap and justified given all the proof on file.”

Jamie Golombek, FCPA, FCA, CFP, CLU, TEP, is the managing director, Tax & Property Planning with CIBC Personal Wealth in Toronto. Jamie.Golombek@cibc.com.

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