Jamie Golombek: A visiting nurse who stored a house workplace argued he ought to have the ability to declare workplace bills, however CRA, choose disagreed
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When you’re an worker who’s within the strategy of getting ready their 2023 tax return, you’ll little doubt 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 case 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 embrace: 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 get hold of a replica 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 using a house workplace and a motorized vehicle. The taxpayer was interesting reassessments of his 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 taxation years by which the Canada Income Company lowered 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 supply nursing companies to people in their very own properties, or in a retirement or nursing house. Through the tax years underneath evaluation, 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 offer 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 every day from his south-central Ontario neighborhood to go to sufferers within the Higher 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, docs) concerning sufferers, saved medical provides supplied by his employers, and saved the medical information of sufferers underneath his care.
To assist his declare for house workplace and car bills, he submitted copies of the T2200 kinds issued by his varied employers for every of the taxation years underneath evaluation, 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 yr.
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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 prospects on a daily and steady foundation in the middle of employment. (Word that for the 2023 tax yr, the CRA mentioned you may 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 because the percentages issued by his employers on the T2200s added as much as greater than 50 per cent in complete, he must be allowed to put in writing off his home-office bills. The CRA disagreed, saying using a house workplace have to be decided for every employment, and the proportion of use for every of the separate employments in situation “can’t be merely added collectively.”
The choose agreed, noting that “based mostly on the T2200s, the full home-office exercise would all the time 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 better a part of the taxpayer’s employment actions don’t happen at his house workplace. Reasonably, 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 every year, which have been denied. Beneath 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 administrative center or elsewhere, 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 “affordable” per-kilometre price. (For 2023, the Canada Income Company considers an inexpensive price 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 greater.)
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The taxpayer might have been entitled to assert a few of these as legitimate bills, however he was unable to produce any proof to again up the bills he had claimed. He testified he had beforehand supplied the information to the CRA by registered mail, however the CRA by no means acquired them, and he was unable to supply any backup documentation in courtroom.
This proved to be deadly for the taxpayer’s declare. “Sustaining books and information 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” concerning the denied bills,” the choose mentioned citing a previous case.
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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