Jesse McLean, a Staff Reporter with the Toronto Star, broke a seemingly lurid story late last month regarding an alleged “tax loss creation scheme” conducted by two former Toronto Maple Leafs players; Darcy Tucker and Shayne Corson. The story recounts allegations made by the Canada Revenue Agency against the two former Maple Leafs stars, which effectively resulted in a CRA reassessment, and disallowed claimed business losses. Mr. Tucker and Mr. Corson subsequently appealed their reassessments, with Mr. Corson’s case still before the Tax Court of Canada.
The focus of this blog post is not on the facts or issues of the case at-hand. It is incautious to say the least to comment on “live” cases, and about any case without objectively reliable information. The object of this post, rather, is to highlight the fact that information is available about cases such as this which is not speculative and that with some effort is accessible. The public – and especially we as tax law students, practitioners, and academics – whether we know it or not, have had access to many of the details of cases raising interesting tax issues, in this particular case for the last five years! Mr. McLean is not privy to any details or information that is not also readily available to you, the reader. Both Mr. Tucker’s and Mr. Corson’s appeals have been a matter of public record since they were filed, in May and September of 2015, respectively. As each case is an appeal of a CRA reassessment, anyone with even a cursory background in taxation law would know that appeals beyond the administrative notice of objection stage are (in most cases) going to be filed with the Tax Court of Canada. As such, to access the appeal details and case history, one need only visit the TCC website at www.tcc-cci.gc.ca .
And it is that easy. Now, of course, to access many of the files themselves, one need to go to the Tax Court of Canada (or its appropriate registry) in-person, or as guidelines indicate. Furthermore, one may need awareness of some kind to know to search a certain name or case in the first-place. Alternatively, one can simply monitor upcoming hearings at the Tax Court – easily done by visiting https://apps.tcc-cci.gc.ca/cf/hearings/hearings_schedule_e.php .
Perhaps it is just me as relatively new to tax law, but there is certainly truth to the saying that “knowledge is power,” and even more so, there is power in knowing that such exciting legal information is available to us all. While the case at hand, featuring pro-sports stars as the appellants, may be a “flashy” story to the media - interesting more for its personalities than what might turn out to be mundane though still potentially complex legal issues, it is also equally exciting to those of us working and studying taxation law, even if just for the novelty of and possible insight from it. And this just goes to show the “fun” that can be had when working and researching in taxation law, or any field of law for that matter.
The law matters, and the work lawyers do matters. It matters for those working a 9-5 everyday, and for those playing professional hockey in front of tens of thousands at Scotiabank Arena downtown Toronto. While we endeavour to represent every client with the same vigour, one would be remiss if they didn’t think the latter was at least a “little cool” – pun intended.
Thanks for highlighting this Corey.
There is a lot to mine in the publicly available court documents - whether the TCC, FCA or SCC. The difficulty, as you note, is that this requires effort, knowing what to look for, and being able to objectively assess what you find. The courts are a forum for advocacy.
The media mines this information in an attempt to highlight what they believe are tax disputes of public interest with varying degrees of success. The problem is that there are generally merits to both sides of the tax dispute that are lost on anyone other than a tax practitioner.