What’s New

With the worldwide concern about COVID-19 there are people out there who will take advantage of others through fraud and deception.   Charities and non-profits in communities across Canada are often in the forefront of dealing with the problems created by…

If you are thinking of establishing a charity or you are involved in the governance of a charity you might found the Blumbergs’ Charity Law Boot Camp 2020 to be helpful.  Even if you are a philanthropist and want to…

If you are wondering about Canadian DAFs versus private foundations you might find this online course helpful: Donor Advised Funds (DAFs) In Canada:  Understanding this important and often misunderstood philanthropic vehicle?

Here is a list of Upcoming Webinars for the Canadian Charity Law Association. The CCLA provides free webinars on charity compliance and related issues.

Blumbergs has created a very interesting new website called CharityData.ca.   Here is a short video that provides an overview of this powerful tool with information on over 86,000 Canadian registered charities with up to 15 years of historical information on each…

The work that charities do is extremely important to our society, so it is vital that various stakeholders, such as the public, the media, the government, donors, employees, boards, donors and others. have access to key information on what the…

If you are interested in why the Charities Directorate of the Canada Revenue Agency recently revoked certain charities then you might find these letters from the CRA to the revoked charities helpful.

The Supreme Court of Canada has upheld the CRA’s ability to impose third party civil penalties when people abuse charities in the Guindon case.

New numbers from CRA identify that “As of March 31, 2014, the CRA has denied more than $6.3 billion in donation claims and reassessed over 190,000 taxpayers who participated in these gifting tax shelters. The CRA has also assessed more than…

The CRA announced that it has revoked a charity, Skyway Foundation of Canada, for issuing inflated receipts for donations of marketable securities.   In Mark Blumberg's Receipting Kit it notes: “When a donor donates shares on certain stock exchanges, the CRA has…

The Taxpayers’ Ombudsman has released a major report entitled “Donor Beware” on charity gifting tax shelter schemes.  The 39 page report rips into charitable gifting tax shelters.  Although it is generally very positive about the work of CRA in trying…

The CRA has released its guidance on ineligible individuals (CG-024).   The new rules were announced in the 2011 Federal Budget and it is helpful to see CRA finally providing its guidance on ineligible individuals.

Here is a list of Canadian charities that had lost their registrations for cause.  We have now updated the list to August 2014.  This list contains over 5 years information on charities deregistered as a result of audit, which used to…

Here is a link to an article “Selecting Great Charities – only tough if your eyes are open” which recently appeared on the CanadaHelps website.  

The Blumbergs’ Snapshot of the Canadian Charity Sector 2012 provides important data on the size and scope of Canadian charities.   The Canadian charity sector is a vital part of Canadian society and economy with revenue of over $223 billion and expenditures…

In an article entitled “Canada Revenue Agency expands investigations of tax shelters”, Kevin Donovan of the Toronto Star discusses how “As many as 12 charity tax shelter promoters are under criminal investigation for schemes that saw donors contribute millions of…

Here is an interesting case in which a municipality, that was allegedly involved in a charity scheme, wanted leave to intervene in a Tax Court of Canada matter involving a donor who had made a donation to the municipality. The…

Wondering why certain charities were deregistered? Here are CRA revocation letters. These letters set out the CRA reasons for revocation of charitable status when CRA is alleging cause.

According to the CRA, the problem of “abusive charity gifting tax schemes” continues. These are schemes that promise that if you put in say $1000 through a complicated scheme you will end up with a $5000 receipt and therefore you…

CRA has been warning Canadians to be careful when donating to charities.

Here is a link to Federal Court of Appeal site for Kossow v. Canada:

Over the last week the Salvation Army has told the media that they have fired one employee in Ottawa for allegedly stealing funds and an employee in Toronto for allegedly stealing over $2 million in toys. The stories illustrate the…

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