Wealth Management Law

The Canada Revenue Agency (the "CRA") has launched roughly 100 audits into taxpayers named in the Paradise Papers offshore tax leak, according to documents tabled in Parliament.

The April 2016 "Panama Papers" leak highlighted the attraction for transnational actors of the confidentiality available in certain offshore financial centres.

The CRS which stands for Common Reporting Standards is in essence an automatic annual financial information exchange tool for tax authorities.

Probate is the legal process through which a deceased person's will is validated by the courts, and the administration of his or her estate is carried out according to the terms of the will.

The fact that we don't have an estate tax in Canada can be both a comfort and a hindrance in some estate plans. While no explicit estate tax is imposed upon death...

Just about anything that a client says to their lawyer is protected by solicitor-client privilege.

The Supreme Court of Canada has confirmed that a trust is resident in the jurisdiction where it makes its management decisions.

The Federal Court of Appeal decisions in Antle [2010 FCA 280, 2010 DTC 7304] and Garron [2010 DTC 5189, [2011] 2 CTC 7] provide welcome direction for those engaged in the planning, implementation and maintenance of trust structures, both domestic and offshore, reminding us to focus on the fundamentals

On November 17, 2010, the Federal Court of Appeal ("FCA") released its reasons for judgment in the St. Michael Trust Corp. appeal, upholding the judgment of Woods J. of the Tax Court of Canada ("TCC") in the Garron Family Trust case.

Gone are the days when offshore bank accounts were outside the CRA's reach. With the advent of the CRS, CRA automatically receives financial information of Canadian taxpayers who own bank accounts or assets in other jurisdictions.

The facts and a detailed analysis by our skilled Canadian tax lawyers follows on this watershed case.

The CRA emphasized that there are more tax evasion investigations to come while also setting out the serious consequences of tax evasion in Canada.