The idea in the July 19 press release was to provide a set of four issues that would need to be considered in the course of developing a rule to help distinguish between genuine transfers of a business to the next generation and more contrived tax planning that does not in fact result in the transfer of business to the next generation. The idea would be to develop a set of rules in order to help distinguish between the two cases and ensure that the benefit provided, which is to say the non-application of the anti-avoidance rule in section 84.1 of the Income Tax Act, is available to intergenerational transfers of a business but only in the appropriate circumstances.
These four bullet points are just the sorts of things that would typically need to be considered. Of course, for a view of a fully fleshed-out set of rules, Quebec has some. They deal with a lot of the same points, although maybe not conceptually ordered in the same way. One is the control of the company that carries on the business going to the next generation: whether or not the parent can retain ownership in the company after the transfer and what type of ownership, whether it would be preferred shares, common shares and things like that; whether there's a particular timeline involved for the transition of the involvement in the business between the parent and the child; or whether it's just a more general requirement that the parent can stay on in order to transfer their knowledge to the child. Finally, it's the level of involvement of the child after the transfer of the business: whether or not they have to maintain an economic interest through shared ownership for a particular period, or whether they need to be actively involved in the carrying on of the business itself.
These are all issues that need to be considered and developed in the course of developing a rule that appropriately targets real intergenerational transfers.