Jamie Golombek: A visiting nurse who saved a house workplace argued he ought to be capable of declare workplace bills, however CRA, decide disagreed
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When you’re an worker who’s within the technique of making ready their 2023 tax return, you’ll little question quickly come to understand that there’s not a lot tax planning we will do to scale back the tax payable on our employment revenue, all of which seems on a T4 slip.
However in the event you do incur varied bills for which you aren’t reimbursed by your employer, together with bills for a house workplace, you could possibly declare a deduction in your return for such bills.
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Typical deductible employment bills (if unreimbursed) can embody: sure meals, beverage and leisure bills; out-of-town lodging; parking; workplace provides; allowable motorized vehicle bills; and even promoting and promotion bills. In fact, to be entitled to deduct employment bills, an worker must receive a duplicate of a correctly accomplished and signed Kind T2200, Declaration of Circumstances of Employment from their employer.
A tax case determined in March concerned the deductibility of employment bills, particularly, these associated to the usage of a house workplace and a motorized vehicle. The taxpayer was interesting reassessments of his 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 taxation years through which the Canada Income Company diminished or denied sure bills claimed in every of these years.
The taxpayer, a visiting registered nurse, was concurrently employed by 4 separate employers in 2015 and three separate employers in 2016, 2017 and 2018. His job was to offer nursing companies to people in their very own properties, or in a retirement or nursing house. In the course of the tax years beneath evaluate, he supplied nursing companies six days one week and 4 days the subsequent week on a rotating foundation. Every week included two or three seven-hour evening shifts throughout which he was on standby for sufferers who required pressing care.
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The evening earlier than every workday, his employers would supply a schedule of the sufferers he was to go to the next day. The taxpayer estimated he visited between 10 and 30 sufferers throughout a day shift, and he labored a median of 40 to 45 hours per week, plus the 2 to 3 seven-hour evening shifts.
Every employer paid the taxpayer a hard and fast quantity for every affected person go to, whatever the nursing companies supplied. He travelled each day from his south-central Ontario neighborhood to go to sufferers within the Better Toronto Space. As his varied employers didn’t present him with a spot to work, he maintained a house workplace in his basement, with a fax machine and workplace provides, the place he held phone consultations with different medical professionals (for instance, medical doctors) relating to sufferers, saved medical provides supplied by his employers, and saved the medical data of sufferers beneath his care.
To assist his declare for house workplace and car bills, he submitted copies of the T2200 varieties issued by his varied employers for every of the taxation years beneath evaluate, which confirmed various percentages of home-office use, from a low of 15 per cent for one employer and “as much as 50 per cent” for an additional, relying on the tax 12 months.
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To be entitled to deduct home-office bills, an worker have to be “required by the contract of employment” to keep up such an workplace as licensed by the employer on the T2200. It should even be both the place the worker “principally” (greater than 50 per cent of the time) performs their duties of employment or, alternatively, used solely to fulfill clients on an everyday and steady foundation in the midst of employment. (Be aware that for the 2023 tax 12 months, the CRA mentioned you possibly can declare home-office bills if your house workspace is the place you principally labored for a interval of at the very least 4 consecutive weeks throughout 2023.)
The taxpayer argued that for the reason that percentages issued by his employers on the T2200s added as much as greater than 50 per cent in complete, he should be allowed to write down off his home-office bills. The CRA disagreed, saying the usage of a house workplace have to be decided for every employment, and the proportion of use for every of the separate employments in subject “can’t be merely added collectively.”
The decide agreed, noting that “based mostly on the T2200s, the overall home-office exercise would at all times be 50 per cent or much less of all related exercise as a result of at no time does the proportion of home-office exercise for an employer exceed 50 per cent of complete exercise.” As well as, as a result of nature of the taxpayer’s employment actions (caring for sufferers of their house or in a nursing or retirement house), this “strongly means that the higher a part of the taxpayer’s employment actions don’t happen at his house workplace. Fairly, the taxpayer’s use of his house workplace is ancillary to and in assist of the efficiency of his nursing duties at different areas.”
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The taxpayer additionally deducted varied car bills in annually, which have been denied. Below the Revenue Tax Act, to have the ability to deduct car bills as an worker, it’s essential to usually be required to work away out of your employer’s place of job or somewhere else, and also you have to be required to pay your individual car bills, as licensed on the T2200.
As well as, it’s essential to not be the recipient of a “non-taxable” allowance for motorized vehicle bills. An allowance is taken into account non-taxable when it’s solely based mostly on a “cheap” per-kilometre fee. (For 2023, the Canada Income Company considers an affordable fee to be 68 cents per kilometre for the primary 5,000 kilometres pushed, and 62 cents/km after that. Within the territories, the speed is 4 cents/km larger.)
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The taxpayer might have been entitled to assert a few of these as legitimate bills, however he was unable to provide any proof to again up the bills he had claimed. He testified he had beforehand supplied the data to the CRA by registered mail, however the CRA by no means obtained them, and he was unable to offer any backup documentation in courtroom.
This proved to be deadly for the taxpayer’s declare. “Sustaining books and data is an ongoing obligation in a self-assessing system and the taxpayer’s failure to take action … made it unimaginable for him to fulfill the evidentiary burden…to demolish the (CRA’s) assumptions” in regards to the denied bills,” the decide mentioned citing a previous case.
Jamie Golombek, FCPA, FCA, CFP, CLU, TEP, is the managing director, Tax & Property Planning with CIBC Personal Wealth in Toronto. Jamie.Golombek@cibc.com.
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