Why CRA denied taxpayer’s bills for hiring his mother-in-law, spouse

Article content material

Staff are extraordinarily restricted within the sorts of bills they’ll deduct for tax functions and the principles are significantly difficult when you’re deducting a wage or different charges paid to an assistant.

Article content material

As a latest case demonstrates, the Canada Income Company could determine to take a nearer have a look at your employment expense deduction when the “assistant” you occur to rent is your partner, associate or different member of the family.

Article content material

Wage paid by an worker to a member of the family is commonly performed to break up earnings, particularly if the worker is in a comparatively excessive tax bracket and needs to redirect a few of their earnings to a zero- or low-income partner or member of the family.

However when found, the CRA typically challenges such planning, and asks the worker to show the quantities paid to their relative had been “cheap” given the hours (allegedly) labored by that relative, and that the quantities had been really paid to that particular person.

Each points had been on the centre of the latest case involving a Larger Toronto Space automobile dealership supervisor who claimed employment bills of $55,945 in 2015 and $50,793 in 2016 towards roughly $110,000 of annual employment earnings.

Article content material

These bills consisted of $24,000 in assistant’s wage paid to a member of the family for every of 2015 and 2016, and motorized vehicle bills (leasing, parking, gasoline and insurance coverage) of $29,000 in 2015 and almost $27,000 in 2016. He additionally wrote off “workplace provides” consisting of an Apple Watch and an Apple laptop computer, totalling $2,850.

The CRA denied all of the taxpayer’s employment bills and the matter ended up in Tax Courtroom.

The taxpayer defined he employed his mother-in-law in 2015 to do some work utilizing a house laptop computer laptop with a VPN connection to his workplace information. The work concerned finishing and shutting the file on every car sale, lease or financing association as they occurred, and included coming into confidential data of each the purchasers and the dealership.

Article content material

Article content material

He testified that given his quite a few tasks on the dealership, he didn’t have the time to do that himself and wanted to rent somebody, equivalent to his mother-in-law, “whom he might totally belief with this delicate data” to do that work previous to submission to the dealership’s accountant for posting.

The taxpayer claimed a deduction of $24,000 towards his 2015 employment earnings for wage paid to his mother-in-law for this work. Because it occurs, his mother-in-law lived with him in the identical home, alongside along with his spouse and children, and, as such, he testified he didn’t really pay his mother-in-law the $2,000 per thirty days, however moderately “credited the quantity towards month-to-month lease for her residing in his home, and towards meals costs and transportation costs to her and unspecified bank card or different costs.”

Article content material

Sadly, no documentation corroborating this crediting was entered in proof, the quantity of the “purported” month-to-month lease was not acknowledged and his mother-in-law didn’t testify. There have been additionally no data as to the hours the mother-in-law labored.

Throughout cross-examination, it was prompt the taxpayer’s mother-in-law’s information of English was poor, to which he responded that she had had some ESL coaching and that the work he had her do didn’t contain understanding English so long as she was “in a position so as to add and subtract.”

In 2016, the taxpayer deducted one other $24,000, besides the assistant he employed this time was his spouse. He testified that his spouse was paid by the use of month-to-month quantities of $2,000 being deposited right into a joint account held by each spouses. In different phrases, there was no precise switch of funds to his spouse. No data of funds or hours labored had been stored, and his spouse didn’t testify in courtroom.

Article content material

Beneath the Revenue Tax Act, with a view to declare a deduction for wage paid to an assistant, an worker should be required to take action by the worker’s employment contract, and a accomplished CRA Kind T2200, Declaration of Circumstances of Employment, signed by the employer, should be obtained.

The taxpayer was unable to offer any proof that his employment contract required him to pay a wage to an assistant, nor might he produce a signed T2200 kind for both the 2015 or 2016 tax yr. As well as, no documentary proof was submitted supporting precise funds of the alleged $24,000 wage for both yr.

For the 2015 tax yr, the choose concluded there was no proof the taxpayer usually charged his mother-in-law for lease, meals and transportation, so he discovered the $24,000 paid to her as an assistant was non-deductible.

Article content material

As for the hiring of the taxpayer’s spouse within the 2016 tax yr, the choose famous, primarily based on a previous case, that merely having an worker’s wage deposited right into a joint account held by two spouses doesn’t represent cost from partner A of a wage to partner B “qua assistant.”

The choose additionally questioned the reasonableness of the funds in each years. How was the annual quantity of $24,000 decided? It was clearly not primarily based on the variety of hours labored. When requested, the taxpayer merely responded that $24,000 was “what we predetermined.”

The choose felt that $24,000 yearly for an assistant was an “arbitrary quantity and overly beneficiant for part-time hours of laptop laptop computer work … (and) was not cheap … for both yr.”

Article content material

The choose additionally challenged the legitimacy of the taxpayer’s bills for 2 motor automobiles, a BMW and a Toyota. In courtroom, the taxpayer admitted the Toyota-related car costs should be excluded as that car was used completely for pleasure. As for the BMW, he admitted that solely 50 per cent of the bills claimed had been business-related. However the taxpayer was unable to offer a mileage log for the BMW or any receipts for gasoline and parking. The choose denied the whole thing of the taxpayer’s car bills.

Lastly, below the heading “workplace provides,” the taxpayer tried to deduct the price of an Apple Watch and laptop computer. The choose, apart from questioning the non-public utilization of the objects, concluded they had been capital bills and thus not deductible by an worker.

Jamie Golombek, CPA, CA, CFP, CLU, TEP, is the managing director, Tax & Property Planning with CIBC Personal Wealth in Toronto. Jamie.Golombek@cibc.com.

_____________________________________________________________

When you preferred this story, join extra within the FP Investor publication.

_____________________________________________________________

Article content material