CRA can acquire tax debt from spouses

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For those who owe cash to the Canada Income Company, it’s fairly arduous to keep away from paying up. In truth, even when it’s your partner or companion that owes the CRA cash, relying on the circumstances, you may be held personally answerable for paying your partner’s tax money owed. A latest tax case, determined earlier this month, exhibits how the CRA can invoke the “joint legal responsibility rule” in part 160 of the Earnings Tax Act to gather a tax debt.

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Earlier than delving into the main points of this newest case, let’s assessment what the legislation says concerning the tax money owed of others. Underneath the joint legal responsibility rule, the CRA has the ability to carry a person answerable for the tax money owed of somebody with whom they’ve a non-arm’s size relationship in the event that they’ve been concerned in a transaction seen to keep away from tax.

“Non-arm’s size” refers to people who’re associated — sometimes blood kin, a partner or common-law companion — in addition to an organization and its shareholders, and anybody else the CRA believes is factually not at arm’s size with one another.

4 standards have to be met for the CRA to efficiently win a joint-liability evaluation: there should have been a switch of property; the transferor and the transferee should not have been dealing at arm’s size; there should not have been sufficient consideration paid by the transferee to the transferor; and the transferor should have had an impressive tax legal responsibility on the time of the switch.

Within the latest case, which has been within the courts for almost six years, the taxpayer was assessed below part 160 of the Tax Act on the idea that she acquired property valued at $10,650 from her husband at a time when her husband owed greater than that quantity to the CRA. The consequence of part 160 making use of is that the transferee should pay the quantity owing to the CRA as much as the consideration they acquired from the transferor.

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Between April 2012 and June 2013 the taxpayer’s husband made 4 totally different transfers of property to his spouse totaling $10,650. These transfers have been made by cheques from the husband’s private checking account to the taxpayer’s private checking account. Since they have been married, they’re clearly non-arm’s size individuals for the needs of part 160.

The CRA took the place that the taxpayer didn’t present any consideration to her husband for the switch of the property. However in court docket, the taxpayer argued that she offered full consideration for the switch of the property as a result of she had “beforehand lent her husband numerous quantities of cash and that the cheques in query have been repayments of these loans.”

The choose remarked that so as to have the ability to justify the taxpayer’s “self-serving assertion” that the transfers have been mortgage repayments and never mere transfers of money, there wanted to be both some type of documentary proof, or possibly even testimony from the husband in court docket.

The one documentary proof offered to help the taxpayer’s assertion is the truth that the memo traces on the cheques include the phrases “payback” or “mortgage payback.” There have been no promissory notes nor mortgage agreements, and there was no system for recording the excellent steadiness of those “purported” loans at any given time. The choose acknowledged that “monetary preparations between spouses are typically looser than monetary preparations between third events.” Due to that, he didn’t count on there to be intensive documentation, since loans between spouses are “the exception, not the rule.” However, when such loans are made, the choose famous that he “would count on to see (them) recorded or documented in some method past a memo line on a cheque.” At a minimal, the choose stated, he would have wished to see proof of cheques with related memo traces going from the taxpayer to her husband when the loans have been first superior.

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When the trial first began again in April 2019, the taxpayer didn’t name her husband as a witness as a result of he was in a foreign country. Her daughter, appearing because the taxpayer’s agent in court docket, contacted her father by telephone and reported that he had documentary proof at residence that may present that his money owed have been lower than $10,650. Based mostly on this, the choose agreed to adjourn the listening to of the enchantment and permit the spouse to re-open her proof with a view to name her husband as a witness.

Following delays resulting from COVID, the Tax Courtroom scheduled the continuation of the case for October 2022. After the Courtroom Registry had closed on the final enterprise day earlier than the trial was to be heard, the taxpayer requested an adjournment for medical causes.

Since that adjournment, the Tax Courtroom has made quite a few unsuccessful makes an attempt to reschedule the continuation of the trial, however neither the taxpayer nor her daughter made any try and work with the court docket to discover a method for the listening to to proceed.

Within the intervening years, the taxpayer grew to become very sick, however her presence wasn’t really required in court docket for the case to proceed. The choose was merely searching for her husband to testify as to the character or quantity of the tax debt which he had disputed was owing.

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Quick ahead to December 2024, after greater than two years of making an attempt to maneuver the case alongside, when the choose gave the taxpayer three choices: proceed the trial in March 2025, when she might name her husband as a witness; proceed the trial with out him being known as as a witness; or file written closing arguments by February 28, 2025, and the choose would resolve the end result primarily based on these submissions.

The taxpayer didn’t reply to any of those choices, nor to a voicemail message from the court docket, at which level the choose was left with no selection however to resolve the case primarily based on the proof offered to this point. The choose drew an “hostile inference” from the taxpayer’s failure to supply her husband as a witness, and concluded that she didn’t accomplish that as a result of he doesn’t even have the proof to help her assertion that there was no underlying tax debt. The choose subsequently discovered the taxpayer answerable for the $10,650 of tax money owed owing by her husband.

Jamie Golombek, FCPA, FCA, CFP, CLU, TEP, is the managing director, Tax & Property Planning with CIBC Personal Wealth in Toronto. Jamie.Golombek@cibc.com.

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