October 1 - Important Changes Coming to VDP

Effective October 1, 2025, important changes will be made to the Voluntary Disclosures Program (VDP) at the CRA in order to make it easier for taxpayers to correct unintentional filing errors or omissions. The details on how the changes will affect your clients are being discussed in the CE Summit held September 17 and this course is now available for online enrolment and CE accreditation, after the virtual event. Here are some highlights of the changes.

This tax season has been particularly challenging for both taxpayers and tax professionals. The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) provides tax information slips—such as T3, T4, T5, and their variations—through secure online portals: My Account and Represent a Client (RAC). This year, there were lots of problems with these portals, and now, it appears, CRA is not being quite transparent about when the slips were actually visible to clients and that doesn’t seem fair. Here’s an update on where we stand now.

The T1135 form, officially titled Foreign Income Verification Statement, is a crucial document for Canadian taxpayers who own, or hold specified foreign property with a total cost of more than CAD 100,000 at any time during the year. Its primary purpose is to allow the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) to track offshore assets and ensure that Canadians are properly reporting foreign income. However, many taxpayers overlook or delay this filing, which can lead to significant penalties and consequences. This article explains the implications of late filing  the T1135, including who needs to file, deadlines, penalties, and options for voluntary disclosure.

As we honour National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21, we celebrate the cultural strength and resilience of Indigenous communities—and recognize the transformative economic moment that is before us – to shift focus from individual to community-wide wealth strategies that support our Indigenous people in building sustainable, intergenerational community wealth.  With settlement payments now flowing, Indigenous Nations have a powerful opportunity to transform these funds into lasting community wellbeing. Financial professionals can meet this moment by adopting the Real Wealth Management™ (RWM) model—not just for individuals, but for entire communities.

Introducing an innovative new educational opportunity for public practitioners and new entrepreneurs: KB Customizable Workplace Training Packages. Today’s most successful organizations know that collective growth drives collective success in building client relationships that fuel strategic growth. That’s why investing in your team’s technical knowledge and skills development is essential. Now it is possible to choose educational solutions from industry-specific Workplace Training Packages. You can customize a solution tailored to your team’s specific goals, roles, and industry needs over your fiscal year, with an affordable, convenient monthly budget plan.

In 2025, over $1 trillion in wealth is expected to transition between generations in Canada alone—much of it held by values-driven individuals seeking to leave a meaningful legacy. At the same time, 72% of Canadians say they want their advisors to discuss charitable giving as part of their financial plan, but only 13% of advisors initiate that conversation according to a report from CAGP, The Philanthropic Conversation. This represents a critical gap—and a powerful opportunity.

Register by June 30 to save on tuition for the Annual Acuity Conference for Distinguished Advisors, who will be exploring the theme: Happy Landings, November 23-26 in spectacular Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. This may in fact, be the most important conference you attend this year: Canada’s only multi-disciplinary gathering, appropriately in Mexico, will bring leading Canadian and international thought leaders together to ponder our New Era of Risk and Reward.