our 10th year
blog anniversary
As of today, according to the Gregorian calendar, we are just over one month away from ringing in the New Year. If you are already contemplating your New Year’s resolution, we thought we would help out in this blog post by providing you with a shortlist of “thinking points” for
High net worth individuals have been criticized (especially during election years) for not paying their fair share of taxes. These individuals often take advantage of legitimate tax planning strategies to lower their taxes. A portion, though, utilize evasive strategies that rely on a general lack of tax transparency between countries
On January 1st, several new income tax rules for trusts and estates came into effect. An overview of these significant changes are discussed in our Special Advisory. While we understand that there is an ongoing dialogue between the Federal Ministry of Finance and several professional organizations regarding possible changes to
The Ontario Family Law Act (FLA) determines the division of property between spouses on marriage breakdown. But what happens when a spouse is a beneficiary of a discretionary trust? By way of background, the FLA requires each spouse on marriage breakdown to value his or her “net family property” (NFP).
Persons emigrating from Canada are deemed to have sold all of their property, with some exceptions such as real estate in Canada and retirement plans, for fair market value proceeds and are subject to tax on any resulting gains. Once resident in another country, a person may be subject to
One of the perceived disadvantages to using a trust in estate planning is that restrictions on trustees’ investment decision-making under trust law will result in lower investment returns. In particular, this is a concern where a trust has an income beneficiary to whom income is paid, usually for his or
From time to time in the news we read about wealthy celebrities and business magnates who have publicly stated that their offspring should not expect to receive any sizeable inheritance upon the parent’s death. In recent years, these pronouncements have come from a variety of people including Sting, Warren Buffett,
Organizing one’s estate planning to minimize estate administration taxes or “probate fees” (the tax collected by the Ontario government on the date of death value of a deceased’s estate when an estate representative applies to the court for a certificate of appointment) has been a popular goal for Ontarians given
Discretionary trusts are common estate planning tools used for a variety of reasons such as tax minimization and general wealth protection, including protection on matrimonial breakdown and from creditors. These trusts are often used in an estate freeze where shares in privately-held corporations are “frozen” to defer capital gains liability
The world is only getting smaller, not bigger. Technological change combined with affluence has increased our connectivity. People are travelling more and increasingly buying foreign real estate and residing in different parts of the world for extended periods of time – often in warmer climates south of the border in
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