Blog + News

Section 84.1 of the Income Tax Act (Act), in its current form, was introduced in 1985 (concurrent with the introduction of the capital gains deduction), and the provision has always been a source of heartburn for planners. It is a very broad anti-avoidance rule that tries to prevent surplus from being stripped from corporations as a tax-free capital distribution, rather than a taxable distribution in the form of dividends. In order for section 84.1 to apply, there needs to be a transfer of shares of a corporation by an individual or trust to another corporation with which the individual does not deal at arm’s length, and immediately after the disposition, the purchaser corporation and the corporation whose shares are being transferred are connected. While the Act deems related persons to not deal at arm’s length, it also states that it is a question of fact whether persons who are not related to each other are, at a particular time, dealing with each other at arm’s length. If section 84.1 applies, then the otherwise tax-free return of surplus in the form of capital distributions will be turned into a taxable distribution in the form of dividends.

On June 13, 2016, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its Economic Survey of Canada. There were some interesting comments and criticisms about Canada’s overall economy. However, as it relates to small business taxation, the following quote should be noteworthy for Canadian private client tax advisors.

Proposed amendments to the Income Tax Act introduced in the 2016 Federal Budget will significantly alter the Small Business Deduction (SBD) scheme for taxation years that begin following March 21, 2016. An admittedly over-simplification of the complexities of these amendments is that they aim to restrict the multiplication of the SBD in which unassociated corporations provide services to a partnership or corporation a partner or shareholder of which is not arm’s length with the service-providing corporation. A simple example of this is HusbandCo providing services to WifeCo. There has been much discussion, and there is sure to be more, on the application of these amendments to the structures they are intended to effect; however, that is not the subject of this blog.

The breadth of these amendments reaches the most basic of planning and circumstances, and all practitioners should be aware – as we’ll describe in the following two situations.

At the International Fiscal Association conference held in Montréal on May 26, 2016, the CRA orally announced its conclusion that US limited liability limited partnerships (LLLPs) and US limited liability partnerships (LLPs) would be classified as corporations for Canadian tax purposes. In light of similar classification of US limited liability companies (LLCs), the CRA’s conclusion is not too surprising. We applaud the CRA’s announcement that it will allow transitional relief for at least some affected taxpayers as we advocated in our April 22, 2016, publication and we await the further details on the relief measures when the CRA releases its written responses in the coming weeks.