Taxpayers still fighting CRA over COVID benefits and losing

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Taxpayers present up in federal courtroom virtually each week hoping to hold on to their COVID-19 benefits after being discovered ineligible by the Canada Revenue Agency, however they’re often unsuccessful.

In virtually all instances, the taxpayer merely doesn’t meet the qualification standards or their proof strains credulity. Earlier than delving into the small print of a latest case, right here’s a fast refresher of the foundations.

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The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) and its substitute, the Canada Restoration Profit (CRB), have been the 2 essential COVID-19 advantages accessible to people. The CERB was supplied for any four-week interval between March 15, 2020, and Oct. 3, 2020. To be eligible, an applicant needed to display they’d earnings of at the very least $5,000 from (self-)employment earnings in 2019 or within the 12 months previous their first utility.

The CERB was changed by the CRB, which grew to become accessible for any two-week interval between Sept. 27, 2020, and Oct. 23, 2021, for eligible workers and self-employed staff who suffered a lack of earnings because of the pandemic.

CRB’s eligibility standards have been just like CERB in that they required, amongst different issues, that the person had earned at the very least $5,000 in (self-)employment earnings in 2019, 2020 or throughout the 12 months previous the date of their utility.

The CERB and CRB advantages are mostly chosen for evaluation by the CRA when it’s unclear if the taxpayer earned at the very least $5,000 of earnings in a previous qualifying interval.

The commonest kinds of qualifying earnings are employment or self-employment (that’s, enterprise) earnings, however the CRA has accepted that non-eligible dividends (typically these paid out of company earnings taxed on the small enterprise fee) can rely in direction of the minimal $5,000 in earnings required for eligibility since enterprise homeowners have flexibility in how they pay themselves (wage or dividends).

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It was the difficulty of dividends that grew to become an issue within the present case, which concerned a taxpayer who utilized for and obtained CERB advantages from March 15, 2020, to Sept. 26, 2020, and CRB advantages from Sept. 27, 2020, to the tip of October 2021.

The CRA concluded the taxpayer was not eligible for the advantages as a result of he didn’t earn at the very least $5,000 from employment or self-employment for 2019, 2020, 2021 (as relevant), or throughout the 12 months previous the date on which he submitted his purposes.

The taxpayer disagreed and finally took the matter to Federal Courtroom, in search of a judicial evaluation of the CRA’s choices to disclaim him the advantages.

As with prior judicial evaluation instances, the function of the federal courtroom is to not conclude whether or not or not the taxpayer was really eligible for advantages, however somewhat to find out, in mild of the proof and arguments that have been introduced to the CRA, whether or not the company’s choice to disclaim the advantages was “affordable.”

Within the years previous to evaluation, the taxpayer ran a specialised publishing enterprise, primarily aimed toward professionals and contractors within the architectural area. In the course of the pandemic, a paper scarcity had a big affect on his means to print, and varied printing homes have been pressured to stop operations. He tried to transform his publication to a digital one so as to mitigate the results, however his revenues plummeted.

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Though his enterprise had by no means been worthwhile save for one yr prior to now, the taxpayer claimed to have obtained $7,000 in dividends from his firm in 2020. On a private stage, the taxpayer additionally by no means declared any private earnings aside from the $7,000 in dividends declared for 2020. This $7,000 in dividends got here beneath CRA scrutiny because of a sequence of financial institution transfers forwards and backwards between his registered retirement financial savings plan (RRSP), himself and his company.

The taxpayer testified that he withdrew $10,000 from his RRSP in December 2019 with the plan to switch it to his enterprise checking account so as to “decrease his enterprise debt ratio … to make it eligible for a grant.”

In keeping with the financial institution statements he offered, he transferred $10,000 from his private checking account on Jan. 4, 2020, to his company’s account. On the identical day, the company then transferred the $10,000 again to him. Three days later, he wrote a cheque for a similar quantity to his brother.

The corporate’s accounting data confirmed that the switch of $10,000 was thought of a fee of $3,000 to his spouse for “writing,” and the $7,000 to the taxpayer was categorised merely as “Withdrawals – Homeowners.”

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In his 2020 earnings tax return, the taxpayer reported this $7,000 as dividend earnings, however didn’t file a T5 slip from the corporate exhibiting the dividend. The company didn’t produce a 2020 T5 slip till Sept. 12, 2023, following requests from the CRA and its concern that the 2020 “dividend” was “problematic.”

The choose stated that beneath Canada’s self-reporting tax system, the onus is on the taxpayer to offer enough proof to assist their utility for COVID-19 advantages, and the CRA is entitled to ask the taxpayer to offer further paperwork or data to show their eligibility past a tax return.

That is supported by earlier jurisprudence, which has discovered that the CRA is just not required to solely depend on a tax return, however may also think about the proof as an entire, which can embrace invoices and buyer fee receipts, in addition to data accessible by the company’s inner data.

Primarily based on the sequence of transactions between the taxpayer’s private checking account and his enterprise account previous to the fee of the dividend, in addition to that the T5 slip was solely accomplished retroactively in September 2023 following a request from the CRA, the company felt the proof was “not sufficiently credible” to display that he had earned enough earnings to fulfill the earnings eligibility requirement.

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The choose agreed, concluding that the CRA’s choices to disclaim the advantages have been “affordable and justified given the entire proof on report.”

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

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