I'll just quickly comment that over the last few years, simple things for middle-class small business families—like paying a dividend—have now become such onerous chores. To go see your tax professional.... I'm talking about general accountants who are not specifically trained in tax. A lot of them aren't even equipped to handle these new rules that have come out.
In fact, at a round table as early as last week, the CRA couldn't even answer a bunch of questions about them. It's a national issue, they say, so they skipped by a bunch of questions on it in Red Deer. How on earth are we supposed to advise our clients on how to pay a dividend from their company to their holding company or to their spouse? How on earth are we supposed to manage that when we can't even get answers from the tax administrator in this country? We can't get consensus on how to apply these new rules because they're so vague, onerous and open to interpretation. This is going to keep the courts busy for a long time.