Vocan – Tax Court of Canada finds that supplies to insurers of injury assessment reports were not GST/HST exempted

Vocan supplied assessment reports to insurance companies or law firms regarding individuals injured in motor vehicle accidents. The reports were prepared by independent-contractors assessors, who examined and tested the injured individuals at the Vocan facility.

Vocan submitted that its facility was a health care facility, being “a facility … operated for the purpose of providing medical … care,” so that its supply of the reports was exempted under Sched. V, Pt. II, s. 2 as a supply of an “institutional health care service” rendered to patients of the facility. In finding that the Vocan facility was not a health care facility, Lyons J stated that “'medical care’ is to be interpreted as being connected to the practice of medicine,” whereas the assessments activities were not medical care. Furthermore, she found that any care relationship was between the assessor and the individual, not Vocan and the individual, so that “individuals were not patients of Vocan’s facility.”

Accordingly, the supplies of the reports were not exempted.

Neal Armstrong. Summary of Vocan Health Assessors Inc. v. The Queen 2021 TCC 49 under ETA Sched. V, Pt. II, s. 2.