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.