News of Note
Halsall v Champion Consulting – High Court of England and Wales finds that knowledge that advice – that investing in a tax shelter was a “no brainer” - was negligent, commenced when HMRC started investigating
Email this ContentInvestors in a UK charitable gift tax shelter subscribed for shares of a shell company and then, a short number of days later after the shell company had been listed on the AIM, donated their shares to a charity and claimed tax reductions on the basis that the shares had appreciated in value by four times. The scheme depending on this appreciation in fact occurring, and this 4X valuation was based on small trades that had contemporaneously occurred in those shares on the AIM market. However, trading was extremely thin, and the claimants’ expert speculated that the trades were bogus, i.e., had occurred between related persons. However, this point was never tested as the HMRC's complete denial of the claimed tax relief had ultimately been accepted by the investors.
The tax accountant, whose firm was sued in negligence, had orally advised the investors that it was a “no brainer,” which referred to there being “100% assurance that their tax liability would be reduced,” rather than to the acumen of the investors, who were lawyers who had not read the prospectus and claimed to have not appreciated the risk.
Moulder J accepted a statement in the House of Lords that there is no liability of a professional “for damage resulting from what in the result turns out to have been errors of judgment, unless the error was such as no reasonably well-informed and competent member of that profession could have made," but, unsurprisingly, found that that standard had been breached here given the failure to warn that the scheme had a share valuation risk. She also rejected an argument that this valuation risk should have been apparent to the claimants.
However, she dismissed the claims on the basis that (under the applicable limitations rule) they had not been made within three years of knowledge of negligence coming to light. Moulder J found that this time occurred when the claimants became aware that the charity scheme was under investigation by HMRC - and at that point they should have investigated rather than accepting the tax accountant’s assurances “that the Revenue was misguided and they would achieve substantial tax mitigation.”
Moulder J arrived at similar conclusions respecting a 2nd tax shelter that the claimants had participated in, notwithstanding that another tax accountant at the same defendant firm had more conservatively advised “that the prospects of success of the film scheme were 75%.”
Neal Armstrong. Summary of Halsall & Ors v Champion Consulting Ltd & Ors [2017] EWHC 1079 (QBD) under General Concepts – Negligence.
CRA considers that ABM licence fees generally are GST/HST taxable
CRA considers that licence fees received by a store owner for hosting an ABM machine generally are consideration for a taxable supply for GST/HST purposes notwithstanding that it is indirectly providing cash-dispensing services to its customers.
Neal Armstrong. Summary of Excise and GST/HST News - No. 102 July 2017 under ETA s. 123(1) – financial service – para. (l).
CRA has stopped issuing GST/HST refunds to FIs (including deemed FIs or SLFIs) that have not filed their annual return/VDP announcement in Fall 2017
Since May 2017, CRA has been applying non-compliance holds (i.e., freezing any GST/HST refunds on a registrant’s account) for all non-compliant GST/HST registrants including financial institutions that are GST/HST registrants that have outstanding annual information returns such as Form GST111 (the general FI annual return) or RC7291 (the usual selected listed financial institution annual return). CRA also notes that for these (and other) purposes, corporations can be deemed to be financial institutions as a result of a s. 150 election.
After indicating that the public consultation period on the voluntary disclosure program will expire next week, CRA also stated that “it is expected that the CRA will announce formal changes to the program in the fall of 2017.”
Neal Armstrong. Summaries of Excise and GST/HST News - No. 102 July 2017 under ETA s. 229(2) and s. 281.1(2).
Dr. Brian Hurd Dentistry – Tax Court of Canada finds that an orthodontist did not make separate supplies of orthodontic appliances and services
Campbell J found that an incorporated orthodontic practice was making a single supply of exempt orthodontic health services rather than (as argued by it) two supplies comprised of a zero-rated supply of medical equipment (the orthodontic appliance) and of exempt orthodontic services (e.g., adjustment and maintenance services). (Zero-rating would have generated input tax credits.) She stated:
Neither the appliance nor the service on their own can achieve the patient’s goal or objective of correcting or treating their dental issues.
Neal Armstrong. Summaries of Dr. Brian Hurd Dentistry Professional Corp. v. The Queen, 2017 TCC 142 under ETA Sched. V, Pt. II, s. 5 and Sched. VI, Pt. II, s. 11.1.
Zheng – Tax Court of Canada finds that an HST rebate form was signed and completed in the name of an individual who was acting as agent
An individual (Kwong) and his ex-wife (Yu-Lian), who lived along with their daughter in Vancouver, got the younger sister of Yu-Lian (Qun) to purchase a new house in the Markham area for their daughter to live at while she attended university at U of T. Although Qun was named in the purchase agreement and in the application for the Ontario new home rebate application (that was signed by her), all the funds for the purchase came from Kwong and Yu-Lian, Kwong took title to the property and the rebate was credited against the purchase price paid by him at closing.
Russell J found not only that Qun’s role in the purchase transaction was as agent for Kwong, but that:
The Rebate application was not made by Qun…on her own behalf but rather by her in her capacity as agent for…Kwong… .
No worries if your client is AWOL and today is the filing deadline? Although this decision is an authority that, in the appropriate circumstances, a CRA form can be signed by someone as agent even where there is no written authorization from the principal, it goes further than that as Qun was also named as the purchaser in the rebate form.
Qun’s appeal was allowed - rather than being dismissed on the basis that the rebate instead belonged to Kwong (before giving effect to its assignment to the builder). This may imply that Qun was considered to have also appealed as agent.
Neal Armstrong. Summary of Zheng v. The Queen, 2017 TCC 132 under ETA s. 254(2)(b).
Income Tax Severed Letters 2 August 2017
This morning's release of three severed letters from the Income Tax Rulings Directorate is now available for your viewing.
McCullock-Finney Estate – Tax Court of Canada finds that merely filling in a T664 form was insufficient to step-up a property’s ACB under s. 110.6(19)
The taxpayer disposed of two rental properties in 2010 and calculated her capital gain on the basis that the properties’ adjusted cost base had been stepped up in 1994 through having made an election under s. 110(19) to utilize her otherwise-expiring capital gains deduction. In confirming the Minister’s disallowance of the amount claimed as stepped-up ACB, Masse DJ found that although she intended to make the election and had filled in the form (and possibly even filed it), she had not done the rest of what was required, namely, to report the deemed s. 110.6(19) gain on Sched. 3 of her 1994 return, and to claim the capital gains deduction in another part of the return.
Neal Armstrong. Summary of McCullock-Finney (Estate) v. The Queen, 2017 TCC 103 under s. 110.6(19).
Callidus Capital – Federal Court of Appeal finds that creditors’ personal liability, for being paid pre-bankruptcy out of GST/HST deemed-trust property, survives bankruptcy
ETA s. 222(3) provides that payments received by a secured creditor out of property that is subject to the deemed statutory trust under s. 222(1) for collected but unremitted GSTHST is itself subject to a deemed trust in favour of the Crown. However, s. 222(1.1) provides that s. 222(1) “does not apply, at or after the time [the debtor] becomes a bankrupt…to any amounts that, before that time, were collected…by the [debtor] as or on account of tax….”
Rennie JA found that, although s. 222(1.1) causes the deemed trust to disappear on bankruptcy, it does not eliminate the liability of a creditor for having received payments prior to bankruptcy that should have been subject to the Crown’s (at that point, still extant) priority under the s. 222(1) deemed trust, and instead were scooped by it.
In his dissenting reasons, Pelletier JA referred inter alia to s. 67(2) of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, which reflected an intention that “Parliament put the Crown on the same footing as unsecured creditors” in a bankruptcy” – with an exception for employee source deductions, which “is explained by the fact that source deductions are amounts which belong to the employee in question…[and] this money does not belong to the employer anymore.”
Neal Armstrong. Summaries of The Queen v. Callisto Capital Corp., 2017 FCA 162 under ETA s. 222(1.1) and ITA s. 227(4.1).
Six further full-text translations of CRA technical interpretations/Roundtable items are available
Full-text translations of the French technical interpretation released last week, and of a further five items from the October 10, 2014 APFF Roundtable, are listed and briefly described in the table below.
These (and the other translations covering the last 32 months of CRA releases) are subject to the usual (3 working weeks per month) paywall. Next week is the “open” week for August.
572256 Ontario – Tax Court of Canada finds that where a corporation acquired property on behalf of another, the agency rather than trust relationship predominated
Paris J found that, notwithstanding the absence in evidence of a written agency agreement, a corporation (SVO) had purchased property as agent for the taxpayer and others, so that the taxpayer’s pro rata portion of the maintenance and upkeep expenses of SVO entitled it to claim input tax credits. In this regard, Paris J relied on the passage in Scott, The Law of Trusts (also quoted in De Mond) stating:
If [a person] undertakes to act on behalf of the other and subject to his control he is an agent; but if he is vested with the title to property that he holds for his principal, he is also a trustee. In such a case, however, it is the agency relation that predominates, and the principles of agency, rather than the principles of trust, are applicable.
Neal Armstrong. Summary of 572256 Ontario Ltd. v. The Queen, 2017 TCC 108 under General Concepts – Agency.