Daruwala - Tax Court finds an informal oral occupancy arrangement to be a "licence or similar arrangement"

Woods J. found that an informal arrangement between the corporate builder of a home and its individual shareholder under which the individual and his family were given temporary occupancy pending a sale of the home a number of months later, qualified as a "lease, licence or similar arrangement" of the home as "a place of residence" - so that the GST self-supply rule in s. 191(1)(b)(i) was triggered.  As a result, the appellants are entitled to a rebate of the GST that had been charged to them by the builder - and the builder may now face an unbargained-for GST assessment.

This finding of an oral "licence or similar arrangement" has broader significance, as the quoted phrase appears in a number of other HST/GST provisions.

Neal Armstrong.  Summary of Daruwala v. The Queen, 2012 TCC 257 under ETA, s. 191(1).