Jamie Golombek: Permitting donations till Feb. 28 would provide some late tax-planning alternatives
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Did you miss the traditional Dec. 31 deadline to make a charitable donation for the 2024 tax yr? Properly, you could be in luck, courtesy of the postal strike.
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On Dec. 30, the federal authorities introduced that it intends to amend the Earnings Tax Act to increase the deadline till Feb. 28, 2025, for making donations eligible for tax help within the 2024 tax yr. The federal government defined that the extension is supposed to “mitigate the impacts of the four-week Canada Publish mail stoppage,” since many charities depend on mass mailing campaigns every December, and donor response to these solicitations could have been considerably impacted because of the postal strike.
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“Many Canadians donate within the final eight weeks of the yr with an estimated 40 per cent of all donations coming in in the course of the vacation season,” mentioned Bruce MacDonald, president and chief govt of Think about Canada in a December 2024 press launch. “A big proportion of donors nonetheless donate by mail, and these donations aren’t being delivered in the course of the labour dispute. The postal strike additionally implies that many organizations weren’t in a position to ship donation appeals by way of unsolicited mail this yr. There’s little question that the strike has a major impression on donations, with organizations already reporting important losses.”
To mitigate delays brought on by the postal disruption Think about Canada, together with non-profit coalition Cooperation Canada and the Well being Charities Coalition of Canada Inc., known as on the federal government to increase the deadline for eligible charitable donations into the brand new yr, in order that donors can obtain tax receipts for the 2024 fiscal yr even when donations are acquired and processed in early 2025. This was adopted by a Dec. 24 letter from Ontario Premier Doug Ford, in his capability as chair of the Council of the Federation on behalf of Canada’s premiers, to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asking the federal authorities to increase the deadline for claiming charitable donations on tax returns by to the top of February.
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As a reminder, while you make a charitable donation, you get a donation receipt that permits you to declare each federal and provincial non-refundable tax credit while you file your return. On the federal facet, you get a credit score of 15 per cent for the primary $200 of annual charitable donations. The credit score fee jumps to 29 per cent for cumulative donations above $200 (or 33 per cent when you’ve got earnings topic to the highest 33-per-cent federal fee, which was earnings of greater than $246,752 in 2024). Parallel provincial credit work equally, offering most Canadians with a minimal mixed federal/provincial tax credit score value a minimum of 40 per cent for donations above $200 yearly.
Permitting donors till Feb. 28 to make a donation and declare it on the 2024 return may also allow some late tax planning alternatives for many who are charitably inclined.
Let’s say you’re wanting to get a head begin in your 2024 tax return preparation, and begin making ready a draft of your 2024 return in January or February 2025 (some 2024 tax preparation software program packages have already been launched.) You notice that you simply owe a couple of hundred {dollars} of tax as a consequence of some funding earnings you earned and capital positive aspects you triggered throughout 2024. You go surfing, make a 2025 donation to your favorite charity, producing an instantaneous digital tax receipt that you would instantly enter into your tax preparation software program package deal. And presto, bingo: You have got eradicated any tax owing.
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It is a uncommon type of retroactive tax planning, much like making an RRSP contribution for the prior yr within the first sixty days of the present one.
The thought of extending the donation deadline by as much as 60 days just isn’t a brand new one. The truth is, in October 2012 Peter Braid, who served because the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for Kitchener-Waterloo from 2008-2015, tabled a Non-public Member’s Invoice (PMB), Invoice C-458, that proposed to increase the deadline for charitable donations to the top of February to coincide with the deadline for RRSP contributions.
He received the thought from a submission made to the standing committee on finance in February 2012 by Ottawa charity attorneys Arthur Drache, a former tax columnist for the Monetary Publish, and Adam Aptowitzer, who’s presently a associate and the nationwide chief of charitable and not-for-profit legislation at KPMG Regulation LLP.
Braid mentioned on the time that our present tax deadline of Dec. 31 “falls in the course of the busy vacation season, when Canadians aren’t normally targeted on strategic monetary planning. As well as, many households have monetary constraints right now, and are unable to maximise their donations with a purpose to present a higher charitable tax credit score.”
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Whereas the 2012 non-public member’s invoice by no means turned legislation, Braid is happy with the present extension, and hopes that it’ll turn into a part of the Tax Act for future years as effectively. “Transferring ahead, I might encourage this authorities, or a future authorities, to completely examine the impacts of constructing this alteration everlasting … creating two seasons of giving — one which leverages the benevolence of donors in the course of the vacation season, and (a) second (one) that mixes the goodwill of donor motivation with strategic tax deductions when Canadians are extra targeted on maximizing their earnings tax refunds,” mentioned Braid in an e mail this week.
Aptowitzer agrees: “Extending the deadline … is a good suggestion, unbiased of the explanations for it on this case, and given the overall decline in charitable giving, one would hope it can turn into a everlasting function of our system.”
In its press launch, the federal government mentioned that it’ll introduce laws effecting these adjustments as soon as Parliament returns within the new yr. However given the precarious authorities state of affairs, ought to we be apprehensive about this turning into legislation in time for tax submitting?
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This query was raised by Stephen Hsia, a charities lawyer with Miller Thomson LLP in Vancouver, in an e-blast to purchasers advising them concerning the donation deadline extension. He instructed that, given the uncertainty, it will be most secure to make donations by Dec. 31, which is simply too late for anybody studying this column.
However, even when there’s a non-confidence vote that brings down the federal government earlier than enabling laws is handed, I can’t envision a state of affairs wherein any new authorities that’s fashioned doesn’t totally help this charitable provision, retroactively.
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Jamie Golombek, FCPA, FCA, CFP, CLU, TEP, is the managing director, Tax & Property Planning with CIBC Non-public Wealth in Toronto. Jamie.Golombek@cibc.com.
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