Finance committee  Actually, it only takes one clause. The other amendments to the air travellers security charge deal with online notices and paper burden, I assume.

Finance committee  No. One way maybe I can try to explain it is that a financial instrument is something that has an element of risk in it. You put your money there, and it's risky. A mortgage--someone lends money to someone and the person may pay or not pay. The risk element there is kind of the p

Finance committee  I am not sure that I am the right person to answer your question. I work for the Department of Finance and tax collection, in 1992, was the responsibility of Revenue Canada. To my knowledge, the agreement with Quebec was an agreement between the Minister of Revenue Canada and the

Finance committee  Of course, we make sure that the Act is correctly interpreted but I have no information about the time needed to send an assessment notice to a Quebec taxpayer in comparison to a taxpayer in another province, for example. You should understand that, since Revenue Quebec is the p

Finance committee  Yes, there has been. It's important to understand that when you're a provider of a taxable service, you're entitled to an input tax credit. If you're a provider of an exempt service, you're usually not entitled to an input tax credit. So if the provider to you charges you tax bec

Finance committee  I was asked a similar question during the parliamentary briefing and at that time I didn't have the answer, so I did my homework and asked the person responsible for that. Basically, the revenues the government intends to protect here are estimated at over $100 million a year.

Finance committee  I assume your auditor here is not an employee of the corporation you're talking about, because in that case--

Finance committee  It's an accounting firm.

Finance committee  Accounting services are taxable. An accountant is not issuing a financial instrument. An accountant is not going onto the stock market to purchase a financial instrument for a client. It's just accounting advice that he's giving.

Finance committee  You seemed to know them. We always deal with facts. One has to look at the exact nature of the services. That is why one has to be careful when making general comments, especially in the field of financial services. One has to look in detail at what is provided.

Finance committee  I am sure you will understand that I did not decide personally what would be included in this Bill. That is decided by the Minister and that is whom you should put the question to.

Finance committee  I don't want to qualify it as a “loophole”, but I would say “uncertainties” existed following those court decisions, and basically the goal of this amendment is to remove the uncertainty and bring the situation back to what it was before those court cases.

Finance committee  I am sure you will understand that I am not able to make any comment on those two cases.

Finance committee  Very well. Financial services are a rather complex area. There are financial services and there are also associated services which are more of an administrative nature. There was and there still is in the Excise Tax Act a rule stating that one should always verify what is exactl

Finance committee  I'm going to answer that question. I'll give you a little background for the answer. The general rule under the GST is that if it's applied in the course of commercial activity, it is taxable unless it's specifically exempt or zero-rated. Financial services are part of the ser