Toronto Chapter hosts Annual CRA Day.

• Author: Woo, Winston

TEI's Toronto Chapter hosted its annual Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) Day on October 20, 2011, at the Toronto Board of Trade. CRA Day was co-chaired by Toronto Chapter Board members Sandra Pereira and Mary Sacchetti. The event attracted more than 130 registrants, one of the biggest groups in several years. CRA showed its support for the TEI program by sending more than 50 representatives, including senior members from CRA Headquarters in Ottawa and from several Tax Services Offices in the Toronto area.

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The event began with comments by Vince Pranjivan, Deputy Assistant CRA Commissioner for the Ontario Region. Mr. Pranjivan told the group that CRA respected the work done by TEI and considered TEI to be a partner in tax administration. CRA directors discussed a variety of issues:

* John Crowley, Director General, Tax and Charities Appeals Directorate, explained the appeals and settlement process. He described efforts to deal with one of the biggest challenges in his group: workload. Appeals now communicates its decisions to the Compliance group, so auditors can get feedback to improve future audits and thereby reduce the number of assessments be reversed by Appeals.

* Phil Jolie, Director General, Income Tax Rulings Directorate, deals with complex ruling requests daily, but for his presentation, he entertained the group with the more light-hearted examples of ruling requests.

* Jennifer Ryan, Director, International Tax Division, International and Large Business Directorate, discussed CRA's focus on transfer pricing, including the formation of new groups for Banking and Mutual Funds. Downward adjustments, guarantee fees, loss imports, financing transactions, and intangibles continue to be prevalent issues for the CRA, and therefore, continue to be issues for taxpayers.

* Francois Ranger, Director, Aggressive Tax Planning Division, International and Large Business Directorate, described the Joint International Tax Shelter Information Centre, and outlined GAAR...