Finance committee  The Income Tax Act requires the not-for-profit to make the assessment every year to determine whether it meets the definition of a not-for-profit organization. Under our system of self-assessment, it would need to properly assess whether or not tax was owing.

Finance committee  We work closely with the other sectors of the agency that might provide us with useful information based on what they see too. When we are informed that a charity has been involved in receipt-related fraud, we obviously have to audit the charity. Depending on what we discover dur

Finance committee  It is very difficult to manage this problem because things often happen without our knowing it. So the complaints are crucial. The information we might get from the other sectors of the agency is also very important. Unfortunately, at the moment, we don’t have an automated syst

Finance committee  It is more than a shortage of staff. It is rather the way the systems handle the receipts and the way we do our audits. So it is not just a shortage of staff.

Finance committee  That is correct.

Finance committee  That's correct, Mr. Chairperson. A not-for-profit organization can be tax exempt if it meets the requirements in any given year for being tax exempt. The difference between a not-for-profit and a registered charity is that the registered charity cannot operate on a for-profit bas

Finance committee  There is some information that needs to be filed by a non-profit every year, yes. It doesn't come to my directorate, so I'm not as familiar with it, I have to admit.

Finance committee  I don't believe the CRA tracks that particular information, although when there are disaster situations, we do work closely with CIDA and other partners to see where we can help. However, I don't think we track those particular donations separately.

Finance committee  The CRA deals with that.

Finance committee  We have clear instructions. They are listed and available on our website.

Finance committee  No, we don’t receive instructions like that. The audit plan is developed each year by the charities directorate. We then have the opportunity to review the complaints we receive from the public. So we are developing a balanced program with several components, including high-r

Finance committee  We do have an audit program, which we establish every year. We audit roughly 1% of charities every year. If we were to audit a particular charity, we would ask that exact question: whether they are carrying out the charitable activities they said they were going to carry out. T

Finance committee  Mr. Chairperson, there is an established process for determining whether an organization can be registered as a charity in Canada. Primarily it has to be established for exclusively charitable purposes and it needs to operate on a not-for-profit basis. We look to the common law

Finance committee  The Canada Revenue Agency has a limit in its mandate, so we don't actually get involved in the governance of charities per se. However, there are quite a number of obligations that registered charities must abide by under the Income Tax Act. Probably the most important obligatio

Finance committee  We do quite a bit of outreach with registered charities. We also make quite a bit of information available through our website, as well as through information sessions that we offer and through webinars, to explain to charities how they're supposed to be completing the informatio