Finance committee  We did bring a copy of the act.

Finance committee  So that's the Income Tax Act.

Finance committee  I guess there are two parts to your question. One is about the extent to which the bill will clean up the grey pages in the act. I think the answer is substantially or all, or almost all, of the grey pages in the act with this bill will be cleaned up.

Finance committee  I would have no idea as to the number, but if you flip randomly through the act—

Finance committee  Okay. There's the act, and if you flip randomly through it—although here's a page without it—generally there are grey pages. They are probably at least 50% of the pages in the act are grey, maybe.

Finance committee  The grey pages will be composed of two things. One is draft legislation that has been released that is not enacted yet. As well, grey pages will be comfort letters where the Department of Finance has indicated to taxpayers that they intend to recommend to the Minister of Finance

Finance committee  With respect to compliance with the Income Tax Act, as I think most of the committee members are aware, we encourage taxpayers to rely on draft legislation. We encourage the CRA to administer based on draft legislation, but taxpayers do have a choice—so there is that question—as

Finance committee  The short answer is the grey pages will disappear. As to whether this book will actually get thinner, the book won't get any thinner because the way the publishers do it is they show the history of the act. Part of this thickness is just indexing and shows what the act was with r

Finance committee  In terms of what is in the Income Tax Act, what commercial publishers put out, there won't be any additional paper. Obviously in terms of what the actual law is, to the extent that we add a section or something like that, the act itself will grow. But in terms of whether we're ad

Finance committee  If you're talking about the grey pages, in terms of what's not been previously announced, there are very minimal changes in terms of income tax.

Finance committee  In terms of the fiscal measures contained in Bill C-48, the measures by and large are what the Department of Finance considers integrity measures. Those are measures that protect the functioning of the Income Tax Act as intended. With respect to comfort letters or technical chang

Finance committee  In terms of what constitutes a policy measure, obviously, as I indicated in my overview, part 5 does contain some budget 2010 measures with respect to specified leasing of property and foreign tax credit generators. In terms of whether they are purely housekeeping, they are to su

Finance committee  Comfort letters are letters that are issued by the Department of Finance generally to taxpayers. The situation they contemplate is that an individual or other taxpayer is faced with a transaction usually that they would like to undertake, or a particular tax situation. When they

Finance committee  I think in terms of the backlog of comfort letters, if I can maybe step back a bit, obviously the Auditor General reviewed the Department of Finance, and particularly our area, back in 2009, and made two recommendations: that we introduce a better system for monitoring technical

Finance committee  That is correct. Obviously technical amendments were then tabled in the House again in 2006 and 2007 but unfortunately were not passed.