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GST — voluntary disclosure — negotiating interest relief and income tax offset

My client was a company in the courier business. It paid its drivers amounts which it assumed were GST-included, and claimed input tax credits (ITCs) for the GST included in these amounts. However, it did not advise the drivers, when paying them, that it was including GST in the payments.

After doing this for about 8 years, the company was advised by its accountant that it might have a GST problem. The company consulted with me, and I confirmed that it had unremitted GST of over $200,000. Many of its drivers were not GST-registered. Furthermore, an obscure section of the GST legislation that deals with "interlining" freight services applied to zero-rate the drivers' charges to my client, so no GST could validly have been included in the payments.

I approached the CRA to make a Voluntary Disclosure on a "no-names" basis (which guaranteed cancellation of the penalty that otherwise would be assessed). I provided all the facts and argued that the assessment should not go back more than four years, as earlier periods were "statute-barred". The CRA was unwilling to agree to this, as in their view the client had acted with carelessness or neglect, and the assessment could go back the whole 8 years.

I then negotiated a waiver of interest, working with both the Voluntary Disclosure officials and Collections officials, on the basis that my client and its owner would be unable to pay the full balance if interest were to run. Even though the file was still on a "no-names" basis, I provided all financial information, and Collections agreed to the waiver of interest, with payment of the principal over a 3-year period and no additional interest! (This had never been done before on a no-names basis.) Of course, their agreement was subject to the condition that the information I disclosed could later be verified as correct.

I also got the Voluntary Disclosure officials to agreed to reassess my client for the past 8 years to allow income tax deductions for the amounts it had incorrectly claimed as GST input tax credits — even though the time for such reassessment would otherwise have expired.

Only after all of the above did I disclose my client's name to the CRA.

In the end, the client was able to clean up its GST affairs without going bankrupt, and the CRA was able to collect the tax that should have been paid in the first place. Everybody won!

(2003)