Article content material

Tax season is upon us and whilst the submitting time limit is Would possibly 1 (April 30, the traditional due date, falls on a Sunday in 2023, giving us the additional day), now could be the easiest time to start out organizing all the ones tax slips and receipts you’ll wish to record your 2022 go back together with receipts for any clinical bills you paid that weren’t lined through your team or non-public medical insurance plan.

Article content material

Clinical bills are eligible for each federal and provincial/territorial non-refundable tax credit. On your 2022 go back, the clinical expense tax credit score (METC) is to be had supplied your circle of relatives’s general clinical bills exceed a minimal threshold equivalent to the lesser of 3 consistent with cent of your web revenue or $2,479 (for 2022). You’ll be able to additionally declare a provincial/territorial credit score, with the minimal revenue thresholds various through province/territory.

Article content material

Beneath the Source of revenue Tax Act, you’ll be able to declare a METC for bills you paid for your self, your partner or spouse, and your youngsters below age 18. That is claimed on line 33099 of the 2022 private tax go back. Chances are you’ll, alternatively, additionally be capable to declare clinical bills for different family members in the event that they relied on you for improve in 2022. Those bills cross on line 33199.

Article content material

Eligible dependants come with grownup (grand)youngsters, (grand)oldsters, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews or nieces supplied they had been citizens of Canada at any time within the yr. When it comes to family members’ clinical bills, best bills above the three-per-cent web revenue take a look at (or most threshold) of that relative’s 2022 web revenue qualify.

For {couples}, married or common-law, it’s steadily prompt that all of the circle of relatives’s clinical bills be pooled in combination and claimed on one partner’s or spouse’s tax go back, in order that the minimal threshold want best be reached as soon as. Moreover, if spouses or companions have disparate web earning, until they each earn greater than $82,633, the lower-income partner or spouse will have to declare all of the circle of relatives’s bills, since their threshold revenue can be decrease.

Article content material

Article content material

However readers would possibly not understand that the facility for one partner or spouse to assert the METC for bills that the opposite paid is only an administrative concession through the Canada Income Company and isn’t if truth be told primarily based in regulation. Not like the rule of thumb for charitable donations, which used to be amended in 2016 to explicitly permit a partner or spouse to assert charitable donations made through the opposite partner or spouse, no such rule technically exists for clinical bills paid through the opposite partner relating to the METC. This quirk within the tax regulation used to be the topic of a tax case made up our minds ultimate month.

The case concerned a taxpayer who claimed the METC on his 2018 tax go back for $20,675 of clinical bills for his spouse’s mom who is living at a long-term care facility in southwestern Ontario. She has osteoporosis and calls for help in all day by day purposes, together with the usage of a wheelchair.

Article content material

In overdue 2019, the CRA reassessed the taxpayer’s 2018 tax go back, disallowing all of the clinical bills he had claimed for his partner’s mother. It later allowed $607 of the ones bills and denied the steadiness. The taxpayer objected and took the subject to Tax Courtroom.

On the trial, each the taxpayer and the CRA agreed that all of the essential prerequisites to permit the taxpayer’s METC had been happy save one: whether or not the taxpayer if truth be told paid the clinical bills himself. Just about all of the clinical bills of the taxpayer’s partner’s mother had been paid through the taxpayer’s partner from a joint checking account held through his partner and his partner’s mom.

The taxpayer argued that since his partner had authority over the joint checking account, any clinical bills paid through his partner from that account will have to meet the definition of “paid through the person” for functions of saying the METC. The taxpayer maintained that it shouldn’t subject whether or not the expense used to be paid through him or his partner.

Article content material

The CRA disagreed, pointing to the particular phrases within the Source of revenue Tax Act that require the taxpayer, himself, to have paid the bills claimed for a relative. The CRA stated those bills “had been paid from a checking account over which the (taxpayer) had no authority, possession or different proper.”

The complicating issue on this case, and in all probability the explanation why the CRA selected to not observe its longstanding administrative observe of permitting a partner to assert the METC for clinical bills paid through the opposite partner, can have to do with the particular distinctive info of this situation.

By the use of background, a call used to be made in 2010 to centralize all of the taxpayer’s partner’s mother’s revenue and banking operations in a single unmarried account. On account of the partner’s mother’s well being prerequisites, her monetary establishment prompt {that a} joint account be opened below the names of the taxpayer’s spouse and partner’s mother. The good thing about this used to be to permit deposits and withdrawals through every of the joint account holders with out requiring an influence of lawyer to take action, or requiring co-signatures.

Article content material

As soon as the joint account used to be opened, all of the partner’s mother’s price range had been transferred to that account and any revenue she gained used to be deposited there. From that account, pre-authorized debits had been set as much as permit her long-term care facility and her pharmacy to obtain per thirty days bills without delay.

The proof confirmed the partner’s mother’s revenue in 2018 totalled $19,054 whilst her bills for the care house and pharmacy totalled $19,618. Because the pass judgement on famous, “greater than 97 consistent with cent of the clinical bills paid from the joint account had been lined through (the partner’s mother’s) deposits made that yr to the account.”

Article content material

The pass judgement on, due to this fact, concluded that the taxpayer didn’t, both without delay and even not directly, pay for his partner’s mother’s clinical bills, and thus upheld the CRA’s resolution to, a minimum of on this case, observe the stern letter of the regulation, thereby denying the taxpayer’s declare for the METC.

Jamie Golombek, CPA, CA, CFP, CLU, TEP, is the managing director, Tax & Property Making plans with CIBC Personal Wealth in Toronto. Jamie.Golombek@cibc.com.

_____________________________________________________________

For those who appreciated this tale, join extra within the FP Investor e-newsletter.

_____________________________________________________________