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GST — getting CRA to honour a retroactive registration

My client was a corporation that had sold a parcel of land to another company for $8 million. The purchaser provided its Business Number to confirm that it was GST-registered, so that my client was not required to collect GST on the sale.

Unfortunately, neither side (or their lawyers) realized that the number provided was an "RC" corporate income tax registration number, not an "RT" GST number. The purchasing company was not in fact GST-registered.

The CRA audited the transaction and proposed to assess my client for the GST $560,000 plus interest and penalty. My client could not seek to recover the GST from the purchaser, because by this time the purchaser had no assets.

My client's advisers wisely went to the CRA and arranged for it to backdate the purchaser's GST registration to before the closing. This should have been enough to get the auditor to back down.

However, the auditor proposed to assess anyway, stating that the backdated registration of the purchaser did not undo the vendor's liability for not having collected and remitted GST at the time of closing.

At this point the client came to me for help.

I wrote to the auditor, pointing out that the CRA's policy in other reported cases was to take the position that a backdated registration is valid, and retroactively changes a taxpayer's obligations. I quoted from Court cases where the CRA took this position. I cited the GST legislation referring to an "effective date" of registration, and quoted from Court cases where an "effective date" of cancellation of a registration was considered valid. I also justified the backdated registration on technical grounds, as the purchasing company had committed to take over leases and was thus required to register for GST by the date of closing.

I pointed out that if the auditor wanted to take the position that the "effective date" of registration set by the CRA was not valid, this would be inconsistent with the position the CRA had taken in other files. I requested that this matter be referred to Headquarters, and stated that regardless of the outcome I would be publicizing this matter in my GST publications, as the CRA's policy in this respect should be known and should be consistent.

Seven months later, the auditor wrote back to say that he would not be proceeding with the assessment.

Problem vanished!