Red Ink on the Prairies

A day after Quebec’s Finance Minister Eric Girard brought down a Budget featuring a $6.3 Billion deficit, Saskatchewan’s Finance Minister Jim Reiter tabled his government’s budget on March 19. Next up was Finance Minister Adrian Salas, who tabled the Manitoba Budget on March 24. The common thread: there’s lots of red ink on the Prairies. But that’s where the budget documents differ between Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Here’s the latest tax news and why it matters to the advice you give your clients.

The TFSA is an excellent savings vehicle for a variety of purposes including saving for large, long term purposes or providing an emergency fund.  But there are some restrictions about the type of assets that can be held in this plan, and how often you can trade them, something advisors and clients will want to chat about to avoid a tax audit problem.

Your client has just flipped a principle residence, sold a speculative piece of property or traded frequently in his or her TFSA.  Is this a business transaction, a capital gain or an exempt transaction?  In order to determine whether a gain is of income or capital nature, there is no determinative test. However, there are some clues to follow in anticipating the tax outcome and an important precedent-setting case.

The experience at this year’s Virtual DAC Acuity Conference may just beat out last year’s – which the Globe and Mail touted as one of Canada’s most innovative virtual conferences.  Check out this sneak peek through our new speaker videos and DAC-in-a-Box program guide, and then enrol by September 30 to take advantage of early-bird tuition prices.

The reasons are varied, but 60% of KBR readers polled last month said they won’t be hiring new seasonal staff in 2022 and the prevailing reason is uncertainty. Those who will be hiring won’t be doing so before year end but are busy making training plans now.  Here are some of their thoughts on preparing for tax season 2022:

Tax pros need to stay up-to-date all year long!  Knowledge Bureau’s Evergreen Explanatory Notes should be your go-to reference for answers personal, corporate and GST/HST questions. It’s your own top notch tax research library that seamlessly links you to CRA publications and forms while providing educational notes and examples. Best of all it is included in all certificate courses or as a stand-alone subscription.  Here are the topics updated in August:

It’s a frustrating time:  the fourth wave is upon us, and soon too will be tax season 2022.  While the need to stay in quarantine hotels ended on August 9, many Canadians expended significant sums to come back to Canada from abroad during the pandemic.  Are those costs deductible?  The answer depends on the taxpayer profile and circumstances of the expenditure, according to recent CRA interpretations.