White – Tax Court of Canada indicates that you receive nothing when your spouse deposits to your joint account

The taxpayer’s husband transferred $90K in pay cheques to the joint bank account between him and the taxpayer while he had tax debts, as a director for a defunct company, for unremitted GST and source deductions of that company. In finding that these deposits did not constitute a transfer to the taxpayer for purposes of ITA s. 160 (and ETA s. 325), D’Arcy J stated:

[T]he mere placing of funds in a joint bank account does not constitute a transfer. Mr. White … continued to have full access to the funds in the account.

Accordingly, he vacated the s. 160 assessment, and found that the s. 325 assessment could only be made in the smaller amount ($34K) of the transfers that had, in turn, been made from their joint account to the taxpayer’s own bank account.

Neal Armstrong. Summary of White v. The Queen, 2020 TCC 22 under ETA s. 325(1).