Tax & Trade Blog

As we blogged about here, in late 2022, Newfoundland and Labrador introduced a tax on sugar sweetened beverages (the “SSBT”).  An often-overlooked aspect of Canadian indirect and excise taxes is the ability for certain taxes to compound, so that one pays a “tax on a tax”.  This issue is particularly pronounced when supplies are subject to both GST/HST and a provincial excise tax.

A recent issue of the CRA Excise and GST/HST News clarified that the GST/HST is calculated on the total value of consideration including the SSBT and serves as an example of why it is important to consider how taxes interact in practice.

As we have blogged about a fewtimes in the past, corporate tax debts are unlike other forms of liability and can pose special challenges for directors and shareholders of corporations that have unmet tax obligations.  This can lead to dreaded director’s liability and third-party assessments, which allow the CRA to effectively “pierce the veil” and go after individuals or other businesses that would otherwise be protected by the screen of limited corporate liability.

A recent decision at the Tax Court of Canada considered this issue, serving as a reminder to businesses and their owners that these debts are not so easily ignored.

When you are a boutique Canadian law firm practising in a niche area like Indirect Tax, Customs and International Trade, AND you get multiple inquiries from multiple clients with the same problem, you KNOW something is up!

We have been getting a lot of recent inquiries about machinery being seized or held up at the Canadian border on the basis that it is “tobacco manufacturing equipment”.

Another question that we are often asked is what the CRA means by the term “carousel scheme”.  It is a great question, because the CRA does not define its position on that phrase anywhere, other than in private assessment documents that it sometimes provides to GST registered persons on the wrong end of the CRA’s Notices of Assessment powers.

According to the CRA, and in its simplest form:

We are often asked about “accommodation invoices”, and what the CRA is talking about when speaking about these types of invoices.

This is predominantly a term that is used in the GST context but is not defined anywhere in the Excise Tax Act (i.e., the GST legislation) or relatively speaking anywhere in any published CRA administrative document.

But CRA does disclose what it means by “Accommodation Invoices” when it comes time to assess wary taxpayers: