Finance committee  Perhaps I'll make some introductory comments, and then Mr. Trueman can talk a little bit more. What this measure deals with is an additional deduction in excess of the small business deduction, which is available to Canadian-controlled private corporations. The small business d

Finance committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee. I'm here today with Sandra Phillips, the associate assistant deputy attorney general of the tax law services of the Department of Justice; Sean Keenan, director of the personal income tax division of the Department of Finance; and

Finance committee  On your initial question, I can speak to the technical aspect, but just in terms of the consultation, I think the main thing to note, or the thrust of the REIT amendments in this bill.... I think you're referring to a set of draft amendments that was released in December 2010. Re

Finance committee  There's a little bit more of a story than a brief answer. I would note that when Bill C-10 was before the Senate, the Senate did actually have concerns with Bill C-10 with respect to the non-resident trust and foreign investment entities in particular. There were three or four fa

Finance committee  If I can perhaps make a couple of comments in that respect, in terms of ease of compliance and certainty for taxpayers, a lot of what the bill does will ease compliance for taxpayers with respect to tax changes that have been outstanding and have been administered by the CRA for

Finance committee  That certainly has been a concern. The longer it takes, the greater a concern it becomes. Taxpayers are encouraged to file based on proposed legislation. CRA generally administers based on proposed legislation. But taxpayers do have the right to file based on the existing law and

Finance committee  —won't get through.

Finance committee  Yes. So this is not one of our usual comfort letters. This is a consequential amendment to the Income Tax Act that is required to make sure people can get an EI tax credit for those premiums, and that measure is contained in this bill.

Finance committee  In regard to the department's response to the Auditor General's report, it's worth mentioning that there were two recommendations. The first was that the department should use an integrated and consistent process for recording, tracking, and prioritizing all technical issues for

Finance committee  I believe the specific amendment you're talking about was the Fairness for the Self-Employed Act, back in 2009-10, which allowed certain EI benefits to be provided to self-employed people if they chose to opt into the system.

Finance committee  There is a sort of lockdown period at some time on both sides of the budget, when physically our resources are not there. It has rather worked out to the fall, but I wouldn't say that.... Our senior management is very interested in moving forward with additional technical package

Finance committee  When you say “needed to be responded to”, do you mean in terms of comfort letters that we've issued?

Finance committee  Maybe Mr. Porter has a better sense than I do, but I would say we've issued fewer comfort letters per year in the last few years than we did probably in the early 2000s.

Finance committee  It's partly so. It's a bit in the eye of the beholder. Now we're actually trying to do the technical releases and deal with things in the draft releases as they come up. It's partly the number of requests. It's partly how willing the Department of Finance is to issue. Obviously,

Finance committee  We have been talking about restrictive covenants because I think your concern was the intellectual property aspect and generally the issue of intangibles. You also referred to GlaxoSmithKline and Google, which have obviously been in the news, and probably to Starbucks in the U.K.