The Department of Finance’s draft tax legislative proposals, published on Sept. 8, include amendments to improve the clarity and effectiveness of the goods and services tax and the harmonized sales tax rules as they apply to certain pension plans. The proposed legislation would amend the pension plan deemed-supply rules to capture an employer’s expenses in […]
Anyone who has grappled with Canada’s pension-related GST/HST rules can agree with the Association of Canadian Pension Management’s recent assertion that the rules are “extraordinarily complex.” However, this complexity can be tamed through appropriate expertise and knowledge of pension trust principles, coupled with an understanding of the tax policy objectives and policymaker assumptions underlying those […]
The Canada Pension Plan enhancement deal that federal Finance Minister Bill Morneau reached with his provincial counterparts in June has hit a bump in the road. Rather than ratify the agreement in principle, the B.C. government announced on July 15 it would “engage the public” and solicit feedback. According to media reports, the provincial government expects […]
In the 25-year history of the goods and services tax, its application to investment fees has been the subject of a series of battles between the investment funds industry and the federal government. The industry has successfully won at least two court battles striking down GST on investment fees, first in 1999 and subsequently in 2009, […]
At the Davos World Economic Forum last week, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced the launch of its S&P Long-Term Value Creation (LTVC) Global Index, with a further announcement of support made by a group of six of the world’s largest institutional investors, including the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP). In […]
The announcement that the federal government is going to study the option of allowing Canadians to voluntarily contribute to the CPP to supplement their retirement savings has supplied a lot of grist for my mill.
Both small business and insurance industry leaders exhorted the Pooled Registered Pension Plan (PRPP) as a preferable option over the ORPP. But PRPPs may be akin to Dr. Seuss’s Zizzer-Zoof Seeds, at least outside of Quebec.
Decumulation is a trending topic in the pension and broader financial services industries. A Google search on decumulation (and variants) and retirement filtered on Canadian domains yields about 65,000 results! Notwithstanding the discourse, recent experiences of my 80-year-old mother with her retirement portfolio demonstrate that the financial services industry currently does a very poor job when it comes to decumulation.
I don’t believe many pension administrators routinely read the Canada Revenue Agency’s quarterly publication, Excise and GST/HST News. Notification of edition No. 93 hit my inbox earlier this week. Not expecting much news around my practice area of GST/HST for pension and employee benefits plan, my job dropped to read the news that the Department of Finance has published draft amendments to the Excise Tax Act (ETA) proposing that PRPPs will be subject to the same GST/HST rules as registered pension plans (RPPs).
My pension fund clients that have members resident in Quebec have been sending me a form letter they have received from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) suggesting that they must file a new return for 2013, an RC7294, Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax (GST/HST) and Quebec Sales Tax (QST) Final Return for Selected Listed Financial Institutions.