🚀 go-pugleaf

On Aug 31, 2:20 pm, Rob <nos...@eastlink.ca> wrote:
> Alan Baggettwrote:
> > On Aug 31, 8:17 am, oldtrout <no_...@home.ca> wrote:
> >> Alan Baggettwrote:
> >>> A Small Victory for Common Sense :CRA SOTW
> >>> Taxman shouldn't bite the hand that feeds
> >>> Home Depot's tax appeal is one small victory for common sense amid a
> >>> bureaucratic tax system grown horribly and needlessly complex
> >>> Neil Reynolds - Friday, Jun. 05, 2009 12:00AM EDT
> >>> The facts of the case, Home Depot v. The Queen, were not in dispute.
> >>> Tax Court of Canada Judge Campbell J. Miller summarized them
> >>> efficiently last week when he rendered judgment.
> >>> "Home Depot of Canada Inc. collects and remits GST for the Government
> >>> of Canada," Judge Miller noted. "Since 2005, it has contracted out its
> >>> GST compliance requirements to Deloitte Tax LLP, a U.S.-based
> >>> organization in the business of completing and remitting sales tax
> >>> forms and payments for major organizations across North America.
> >>> "With two exceptions, Home Depot has filed on a timely basis and has
> >>> remitted a great deal of money. The two exceptions were the November
> >>> 2005 filing (due at the end of December) and the January 2006 filing
> >>> (due at the end of February). Due to a clerical error, Deloitte Tax
> >>> sent the returns to the Canada Revenue Agency at an incorrect address.
> >>> "When this [error] was discovered, in March and September
> >>> respectively, Home Depot immediately took steps to file and to pay,
> >>> and did so in March and September, 2006.
> >>> "The Canada Revenue Agency assessed late-filing penalties pursuant to
> >>> subsection 280 of the Excise Tax Act in the amounts of $77,097 and
> >>> $326,223 for the periods in question."
> >>> In essence, the CRA hit Home Depot with a penalty of more than
> >>> $400,000 because the company that Home Depot hired to process its tax
> >>> remittances made a clerical error.
> >>> Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, how do you find?
> >>> On the one hand, you have a company with an impeccable record of
> >>> collecting taxes on behalf of the federal government - and two cheques
> >>> sent by overnight courier to a wrong address. One of the misguided
> >>> cheques was for $5-million, the other for $9.5-million. And you have
> >>> prompt fixing of the mistakes.
> >>> On the other hand, you have subsection 280 of the Excise Tax Act,
> >>> which authorizes the CRA to impose penalties on any company that
> >>> misses a deadline, regardless of the reason.
> >>> Much of the evidence in Home Depot's appeal dealt with Deloitte Tax's
> >>> procedures for handling GST returns. The legal issue was this: Does
> >>> any error whatsoever constitute incompetence? Does it constitute
> >>> negligence? Senior Deloitte Tax executives testified that the company
> >>> assigned its most experienced team to the Home Depot file because it
> >>> was such an important client.
> >>> Deloitte is the largest tax compliance company on the continent and
> >>> provides its service to 160 major corporations, 20 of them Canadian.
> >>> It employs scores of professional and clerical staff to prepare and
> >>> file the returns of its Canadian clients alone. For Home Depot in
> >>> North America, the company files 730 separate tax returns a month -
> >>> 8,760 a year. (Home Depot's tax lawyers are an entirely separate
> >>> operation.) Judge Miller described the company as "a well-oiled sales-
> >>> tax-remitting machine."
> >>> The CRA normally rejects due diligence - or doing one's best - as an
> >>> argument by corporate taxpayers, a practice that Judge Miller
> >>> suggested amounts to a requirement for perfection. "Even in the best
> >>> system," he observed, "there is room for human error."
> >>> His judgment in favour of Home Depot was straightforward - and
> >>> comforting. It's reassuring to know that common sense can still,
> >>> occasionally, prevail against an expansive bureaucracy. A few excerpts
> >>> from his ruling: "Here is a corporate taxpayer, remitting millions of
> >>> dollars monthly to the government, and paying experts to do so, to
> >>> meet the collection obligations imposed on it by the government.
> >>> "A clerk mistakenly addresses two remittances. Once Home Depot
> >>> discovers its error, it immediately re-remits. It pays interest.
> >>> "What does the Canada Revenue Agency do? It imposes a half-million-
> >>> dollar penalty and then pursues the matter through the litigation
> >>> process to a trial.
> >>> "A step back for a balanced look by a CRA official, exercising a good
> >>> dose of commercial common sense, should not have resulted in the
> >>> relentless pursuit of a half-million-dollar penalty. Yes, the Act
> >>> stipulates that taxpayers are to be penalized for remitting late - but
> >>> do not bite the hand that feeds you when the hand tries so diligently
> >>> to ensure that you get every mouthful.
> >>> "It is easy to be critical of behavior after an error has been
> >>> committed. In considering whether a taxpayer acted with due diligence
> >>> to minimize the possibility of error, one can always find something
> >>> else that the taxpayer might have done. But that is not the test. The
> >>> test is whether what the taxpayer in fact did was sufficient
> >>> reasonable precaution - not that the taxpayer did not hold the hand of
> >>> the employee [who made the mistake] throughout every single task, no
> >>> matter how menial, although Deloitte Tax went a long way to doing
> >>> exactly that."
> >>> Judge Miller upheld Home Depot's appeal and cancelled the fines - one
> >>> small victory for common sense amid the intellectual bewilderment and
> >>> regulatory confusion inherent in a bureaucratic tax system grown
> >>> horribly and needlessly complex.
> >>> reynolds.gl...@gmail.com
> >>> -----------------------------------------------------------
> >>> Miss a Tax Tale Miss a lot!
> >>> Visit the CRA SOTW Library athttp://canada.revenue.agency.angelfire.com
> >>> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>Alan Baggett– Tax Collector’s Bible
> >> Bravo Zulu for Judge Miller
>
> >> --
> >> oldtrout - àrsaidh-breac
> >>       Gum bi si\th leat- Hide quoted text -
>
> >> - Show quoted text -
>
> > Bravo indeed!
>
> You had to reply, didn't you trout.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

Hmmmm.....