It is trite law that guidance about registered charities issued by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), through its Charities Directorate, does not have the force of legislation or regulations. Courts can reject or ignore it when determining the permissibility or impermissibility of an organization’s … [Read more...]
Tax Problems
As I write this a controversy is playing out in the United States over apparent targeting of Tea Party and other conservative groups by local offices of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to determine if they met American statutory requirements for exemption from tax. Under U.S. law such groups must … [Read more...]
Overhead Overdone?
During my youth collecting hockey cards was a rite of passage – and a few of my contemporaries continued to amass collections into adulthood. I am not a hobbyist by nature, but I do collect junk mail from cable companies. That’s because I so frequently hear complaints about the number of direct mail … [Read more...]
Anti-spam Law May Snare Charities
Those of us who work for charities are probably as accustomed as anyone to getting unsolicited emails asking for funding or other support. Even in the occasional cases where these requests are genuine, rather than scams or trickery, the sender often hasn’t taken the time to even check if what’s … [Read more...]
Proposed Bill, Though Well-intentioned, Raises Questions
In what is becoming a quite regular occurrence, the latest Parliamentary session saw introduction of a Private Member’s Bill related to charities. Bill C-458, sponsored by Kitchener-Waterloo MP Peter Braid and given first reading in the House of Commons in late October, calls for an annual National … [Read more...]
Questioning Jurisdiction
One of the great unanswered questions in Canadian charity law is just how far the federal government’s jurisdiction extends over “Establishment, Maintenance, and Management of Hospitals, Asylums, Charities, and Eleemosynary Institutions”. That is the language used in s. 92(7) of the 1867 … [Read more...]
More Clarity on Program-Related Investment Rules in New CRA Guidance on Community Economic Development
Although the idea that charities ought to be more entrepreneurial is frequently lauded these days, the practical difficulties of doing so are easy to underestimate. One aspect of this is the suggestion that charities could or should engage in more revenue-generating activities as a means of … [Read more...]
2012 Federal Budget Features Tighter Reporting on Charities’ Political Activities
Now charities provisions in the 2012 federal Budget generated more attention than any measures relating to the sector have in a very long time. The government announced that it was tightening rules around charities’ political activities. The focus of the new requirements was mostly on enhanced … [Read more...]