Stanley Law - GST/HST for legal fees is constitutional!

The Tax Court has unsurprisingly concluded that people charged with offences are not exempted from paying GST/HST on their legal fees because of their s. 10(b) right to counsel and s. 11(d) right to a fair trial.  Paris J. found that the appellant failed to provide an "evidentiary foundation" for the proposition that the effect of s. 165(1) of the ETA (the GST/HST charging provision) was to diminish a defendant's rights under ss. 10(b) or 11(d) of the Charter.

Although it is hard to imagine an evidentiary foundation that would lead the Tax Court to exempt defendants from GST/HST, it is also hard to imagine that increasing the cost of legal services through taxation would not diminish a defendant's access to counsel in a borderline situation.  There is probably some as-yet-unestablished constitutional principle that taxes of general application are presumptively a reasonable limit on any incidentally affected Charter rights.

Scott Armstrong.  Summary of Stanley J. Tessmer Law Corporation v. The Queen, 2013 TCC 27 under Charter s. 11(d).