August 26, 2012
The CRA recently imposed a small penalty of about $9500 on The Riddell Family Charitable Foundation because it had not met its divestment obligation under the excess business holdings rules.
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August 24, 2012
The CRA has announced new charity information sessions for September and October.
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August 17, 2012
The new Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act (CNCA) came into force October 17, 2011. Industry Canada has placed hundreds of pages of information on the new act on their website in over 70 different documents. We have tried to accumulate the information in one PDF document which is now over 500 pages. For up to date information check the Industry Canada website. We have also included for registered charities information from the Charities Directorate of CRA. This document may be helpful because it is easier to save a PDF to your computer or laptop especially if you will not have internet connectivity. Furthermore, one can word search (usually Control F) for words through the document. This document is not comprehensive and in the future we may update it.
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August 13, 2012
Here is a CRA letter which discusses the dates and value to be used on official donation receipts for a bequest under will.
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CRA recently put out a short press release on its Non-Profit Organization Risk Identification Project. This project applies to non-profits who are not registered charities under the Income Tax Act. CRA is looking at whether these non-profits are acting within the rules governing non-profits. In some cases some non-profits have received education letters from the CRA. Unfortunately, CRA is not allowed to identify which organizations are non-profits and we understand there are about 80,000 - 100,000 of them. I have made submissions to the Finance Committee that s. 241 of the Income Tax Act should be amended to allow CRA to disclose certain basic information about non-profits (as it can do with registered charities).
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August 11, 2012
In July 2011 the CRA imposed a penalty of $174,228.08 on the Reimer Express Foundation Inc, which is a Canadian private foundation based in Winnipeg. The penalties related to certain payments that CRA characterizes as gifts to non-qualified donees. Paul Waldie covered the Foundation in an article in the Globe and Mail entitled “Improper giving prompts tax trouble for trucking magnate’s Christian charity”. Here are the letters from the Charities Directorate of CRA to Reimer Express Foundation Inc. re: penalties for gifts to non-qualified donees.
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August 10, 2012
The Charities Directorate of the CRA has posted a page on CIDA’s Sahel Crisis Matching Fund.
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August 07, 2012
Posted by Mark Blumberg on 08/07 |
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Canadian Charity Law
The Canadian government is launching a matching program for donations made by Canadians to organizations from August 7 - September 30, 2012. CIDA notes: “An estimated 18.7 million people in the Sahel region in West Africa are affected by a food and nutrition crisis due to drought, sporadic rains, poor harvests, soaring food prices and widespread displacement. As a result, more than 1 million children under the age of five are at risk of dying from severe acute malnutrition. Canada, through CIDA, is helping to meet vital humanitarian needs in the Sahel, and as part of its efforts, has created the Sahel Crisis Matching Fund. For every eligible dollar donated by individual Canadians to registered Canadian charities, Canada will set aside one dollar for the Sahel Crisis Matching Fund. CIDA will allocate these funds to established Canadian and international humanitarian organizations for humanitarian assistance efforts that benefit the people most affected by the crisis.” Organizations that receive a donation will not receive directly a matching amount but those organizations will advise CIDA of the funds collected and then CIDA will have a process to determine which organizations receive the funds. Organizations that are interested in potentially applying for those funds should review CIDA’s “Guidelines for Emergency Humanitarian Assistance Project Proposals and Reports”.
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August 03, 2012
Posted by Mark Blumberg on 08/03 |
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Canadian Charity Law
The Standing Committee on Finance Pre-Budget submission deadline for the 2013 Canadian Federal Budget has passed. I put in a brief submission with a number of recommendations including: Recommendations: 1) We need better governance in the charity sector through education and training to ensure that there is appropriate stewardship of the resources that charities have. 2) We need more transparency in the charitable sector through a. changes to the Income Act to allow CRA to disclose more about registered charities and also non-profits; b. an improved T3010 Registered Charity Information Return which provides greater details on charities, especially large charities, as we have seen in the UK and US improving their charity sector’s transparency over the last few years; and c. Canadians need to encouraged to be more knowledgeable and aware in their giving and to be able to carefully select worthy charities and avoid scams; 3) We need to reduce the amount of abuse of charities by a relatively small number of people a. by monitoring the implementation of the “ineligible individual” rules, and if these rules are not sufficiently effective in removing those who abuse charities, or their beneficiaries, then considering additional measures.; and b. making greater use of police forces to investigate abuse of charities and establishing a dedicated police unit that focuses on complicated schemes involving charity fraud. 4) We don’t need more tax incentives that will disproportionately benefit a few charities, including closely held private foundations, and some very wealthy individuals. Rather we should make small changes to the disbursement quota to increase the payout from 3.5% to 5%, so hundreds of millions of dollars can be used for charitable programming that would have been otherwise an unauthorized encroachment on capital.
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August 02, 2012
Posted by Mark Blumberg on 08/02 |
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Canadian Charity Statistics
Statscan has put out some reports recently on charitable giving and volunteering as well as more specific reports on giving by immigrants and employer support of volunteering,
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