Taxes

Committee Information: Annual Report

2007-2008 Annual Report

The Committee met in Charlottetown in June 2007 at the CAUBO conference sponsored by the University of Prince Edward Island. During the year the main focus has been on updating of the CAUBO Income Tax Guide and the CAUBO GST/HST Guide. CAUBO has joined with the CICA and begun the development of the updates to the guides posting them on the CICA Knotia site. To handle the development, CAUBO employed the service of Tracey McHardy to work 0.5 FTE on the project and the work has been vetted by the professional staff of Ernst & Young. The Income Tax Guide update was completed for the annual conference. During the year Tracy McHardy has been in regular contact with the Chair of the Committee and the Executive Director of CAUBO providing progress reports. The guide is hosted on the CICA Knotia site.

The Committee met five times during the year to deal with various tax issues affecting universities. With the completion of the CAUBO Income Tax Guide, the group promoted the availability of the resource to the universities. The Committee agreed on the outline and chapter structure for the CAUBO GST/HST Guide. During the year Tracey has completed the first draft of the chapters and we are awaiting final approval from Knotia before posting to the website. We anticipate that by June the first two chapters will be available.

On January 15, 2008 the Committee met for a full day to establish an agenda for the next two years. In particular the Committee began the planning of a webinar series on income tax issues effecting universities. This series will begin in the fall of 2008 and involve the following areas:

• Employee vs. contracted services
• PDF’s and income tax treatment
• Funding raising and charitable donation receipts
• Research
• Student

In addition the Committee met with Bill Dobson from CRA to discuss current audit issues regarding HST/GST administration and areas of improvement.

During the year the Government of Canada introduced legislation with Bill C-10 that, if passed, could have negative income tax consequences on endowment and pension funds of the universities. The Taxes and Treasury Committees jointly wrote to the Minister of Finance, the House of Commons Finance Committee and the Senate Banking, Trade and Commerce Committee to express our concerns. In return the Department of Finance has stated they plan to issue a letter of comfort that would confirm their intent not to tax universities. To date the C-10 remains stalled in the Senate Committee and the letter of comfort has not been issued. CAUBO and the respective committees will monitor the situation.

This is my final report as Chair of the Committee and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the members of the Committee who have answered questions and provided their assistance with the issues during the year. The Committee looks forward to the coming year as we move forward with completion of the GST Guide and the beginning of the webinar series.

Chair
Darrell Cochrane, Dalhousie University

Members
Kent Decker, Vice-President, Finance & Administration, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Aldo DiMarcantonio, Comptroller, York University

Glenda Kaye, Director, Financial Analyst and Budget, Queens University

Tracey McHardy, Manager - Taxation, University of Saskatchewan

Michael Murdock, Senior Analyst, Planning & Capital, Simon Fraser University

Denise Rainsville, Senior Analyst – Internal Controls, McGill University

Alain Sauvageau, Conseiller Principal trésorerie et gestion des risques, Université de Montréal