Tax & Trade Blog

As previously discussed in our Customs & Trade Blog, the Government of Canada (“GoC”) has been preparing a “luxury tax” on cars/trucks, personal aircraft and personal boats. The luxury tax was initially proposed in the 2019 Liberal Party of Canada platform, as a 10% tax on cars, boats and personal aircraft over $100,000.

Budget 2021 outlined that the luxury tax would be the lesser of 20% of the vehicle’s value above a threshold, or 10% of the full value of the luxury vehicle. The threshold proposed was $100,000 for cars/trucks and aircraft and $250,000 for boats. The timeline for coming-into-force was January 1, 2022.

With home prices across Canada skyrocketing (some say on account of a combination on and off-shore buyer speculation as well as a pandemic-induced exodus from major cities), various federal, provincial and municipal governments have been kicking the tires on new vacancy tax policies patterned off of Vancouver’s 2017 politically popular (and revenue generating) measures.

Canadian homeowners and first-time investors will need to brace themselves for the roll-out of these taxes across the country, as it seems that — like the “carbon tax” — these measures are almost sure to come on a broad-based level.

Public law (or restitutionary) remedies are usually relied on as a last resort by taxpayers facing CRA assessments. They are last resorts because they are only available in exceptional circumstances, and the CRA almost never applies them, while the Courts rarely apply them.

One interesting historic restitutionary remedy, first established by the Supreme Court in Kingstreet Investments Ltd. v. New Brunswick (Finance)– and now called the “Kingstreet” remedy – allows a taxpayer the right to recover the taxes levied under unconstitutional legislation which before Kingstreet was doomed to fail under a claim for unjust enrichment against Crown.

The Federal Court in Canadian Pacific Railway Company v. Canada (“CPRC”) had the opportunity to consider this special remedy, and underlines its limited application: only being triggered when a tax charged by a government is constitutionally ultra vires (i.e., by virtue of unlawful legislation), and not triggered because of some unlawful government administrative actions!  

The FCA has ruled against the Bank of Montreal (“BMO”) (2021 FCA 189) in its challenge of the Minister’s decision to deny BMO’s input tax credit (“ITC”) allocation methodology under section 141.02(18) of the Excise Tax Act. This will likely be bad news for certain institutions that elect to use their own methods for allocating ITCs within complex corporate groups.

As with have blogged about many times in the past (see here, here, here, and here), one of the most misunderstood areas of the law around corporate directors is the concept of director’s liability for the corporation’s unremitted tax.

Several recent cases in our practice have reminded us of the critical importance of these rules and how all directors can benefit from a refresher of their basic structure.