TaxOnTax Advisory

10/28/2026

Just named executor? Don't pay out the estate before this one step.

The family wants their inheritance. The estate has money in the bank. The pressure to pay out is real.

Before the final distribution, an executor needs CRA's clearance certificate. It confirms the deceased's and the estate's taxes are paid or secured. Pay out without it, and if tax later turns out to be owing, you are personally liable up to the value of what you paid out.

Here is how that plays out. Say an executor pays each of three children $50,000 eight months after the grant and keeps $20,000 back. The final return later shows $68,000 owing, most of it tax on a RRIF. The executor would be personally liable for the $48,000 shortfall and would have to ask the family to give money back. Waiting for the certificate means the tax is paid from the estate first.

You can still pay the estate's bills as they come due. The certificate is requested on Form TX19 after the returns are assessed, and CRA can take up to 120 days to decide. One to two years for the whole estate is common. Tell the family that early; it saves hard feelings.

Executors: how long did your estate take, from the death to the final distribution?

Drawn from my upcoming book, Legacy Planning in Care. The ten free worksheets are at taxontax.com/worksheets.

Full answer: https://taxontax.com/answers/clearance-certificate/

General information, not tax or legal advice for your situation.
Derik Godbout, PBA, CEA, DMA | TaxOnTax™ Advisory Ltd. | taxontax.com/answers

The ten free fillable worksheets that go with the book Legacy Planning in Care. No sign up, no email address, no payment.

10/27/2026

Event 12: The executor who paid the estate's tax bill himself

Picture this. A man is named executor of his father's estate, along with his brother. Years go by. He's not running the day to day, just helping tie up a few loose ends. At some point he signs off on dealing with a piece of estate property.

Here's what he didn't know. The estate still owed income tax, and he hadn't gotten a clearance certificate from the CRA first. That certificate is the CRA's written confirmation that everything owing has been paid. Deal with estate property before you have it, and the CRA can come after the executor personally for the unpaid tax. That's exactly what happened. The debt was never his. It became his the moment he acted without that certificate in hand.

Nobody warned him. He was just trying to help, and he ended up on the hook for a bill he had nothing to do with creating.

This is the part of being an executor almost no one understands until they're in it. A will names who's in charge. What that person actually has to do, the final returns, the elections, the clearance certificate, the order it all has to happen in, is separate work, and it's the difference between closing an estate cleanly and paying for it out of your own pocket.

If you've been named an executor, or you've named someone in your own will, understanding the job before the day comes is one of the kindest things you can do for each other. Start with a free 15-minute call.

An illustration of how the rule works. General information, not advice for your situation.
Derik Godbout, PBA, CEA, DMA | TaxOnTax Advisory Ltd. | Edmonton | taxontax.com

10/26/2026

Renting? Already maxing out your RRSP? This one's for you. 🏡➡️💰

A lot of people skip the First Home Savings Account (FHSA) because they're not planning to buy a house. But here's something many folks don't know:

If you never buy a home, you can move your FHSA savings straight into your RRSP, tax-free, and it doesn't use up any of your RRSP room.

That means up to $40,000 of extra retirement savings, plus whatever it has grown to, on top of your regular RRSP contributions.

Here's the quick version:
✔️ Put in up to $8,000 a year, to a $40,000 lifetime max
✔️ Get a tax deduction, just like an RRSP
✔️ Buy a home? Take it out tax-free for the purchase
✔️ Keep renting? Transfer it to your RRSP without using your room

A few things to keep in mind:
• The transfer has to go directly from one financial institution to the other. Don't withdraw it yourself.
• You need to be a first-time home buyer when you open the account (most long-term renters are).
• Your room only starts building once the account is open, so earlier is better.
• It isn't the right fit for everyone. If your TFSA isn't full yet, or your income is low, it may make sense to start there first.

Curious whether this fits your plan? Send me a message or give the office a call at 825-977-7999. I'm happy to walk you through it. 😊

Derik Godbout, PBA, CEA, DMA
TaxOnTax Advisory Ltd. | Edmonton
taxontax.com

This post is general information, not personal tax advice.

10/21/2026

Event 11: The widow who inherited her husband's tax bill

Picture this. A husband dies, and his wife is the designated beneficiary of his retirement savings. The money comes to her directly, exactly as he intended.

Then the CRA comes for his unpaid taxes, and collects from her. The law allows it: when someone dies owing tax, the CRA can recover it from money that passed to a beneficiary. Grieving, and paying his bill out of what he left her.

Nobody planned for that. His designations said one thing, his debts said another, and no one ever looked at the two together.

This is what I mean when I say a will is not an estate plan. Your lawyer drafts the will. The tax architecture around it, what the final return will owe, whether the designations create surprises, whether there's enough liquid money to pay the bill without touching what the family keeps, is separate work, and it can only be done while you're alive.

If your spouse handled the finances and you're not sure how your designations and debts line up, that review is one of the kindest things you can do for each other. Start with a free 15-minute call.

An illustration of how the rule works. General information, not advice for your situation.
Derik Godbout, PBA, CEA, DMA | TaxOnTax Advisory Ltd. | Edmonton | taxontax.com

10/12/2026

Event 10: The CRA called her home sale a business. She proved them wrong.

A Quebec woman sold a house and the CRA added a $69,000 gain to her income, calling it business profit, the way it treats builders and flippers. She said it was simply her home.

She took the CRA to Tax Court by herself, no lawyer. In 2011, she won.

What decided it? Her story held together. How long she'd owned it, why she sold, what she did while she lived there. The facts of how you actually use a property are what separate a tax-free home sale from a taxable flip, and the CRA has been testing that line harder every year.

The same line runs through every property decision families make. Keep the old house as a rental and the rules change underneath it. Claim depreciation on the rental and part of it comes back when you sell. Move into your rental, or rent out your home, and there's paperwork with a deadline attached.

Planning any move with a property this year, buying, selling, renting it out, moving back in? The cheapest advice you'll ever get is the conversation that happens before the change, not after.

Real cases from the Tax Court of Canada. General information, not advice for your situation.
TaxOnTax Advisory Ltd. | Edmonton, Alberta | taxontax.com

10/06/2026

Event 9: The resignation letter worth half a million dollars

A company failed to remit more than $500,000 of payroll withholdings, and the CRA assessed two of its former directors personally. Their defence: they had resigned more than two years before the assessments, and the law limits director liability to two years after leaving. The Tax Court agreed. The Federal Court of Appeal did not. Their resignation letters were unsigned, undated and never delivered to the corporation, so they had never resigned, and the assessments were restored (Canada v. Chriss, 2016 FCA 236).

This one is personal for a lot of farm and small-business couples. Spouses get added as directors for financing, for shares, for convenience, and then everyone forgets. But a director signature carries real liability: payroll withholdings, GST, and more, personally, even for the spouse who never touched the books.

Whether a resignation was legally effective is a question for your lawyer. What that directorship means for your family's tax exposure is a question for me. Both deserve answers while the business is healthy, not after.

Quick check for every couple in business: do you know exactly which companies you and your spouse are directors of, right now? Many people who signed years ago don't.

From a published court decision. General information, not advice for your situation.
Derik Godbout, PBA, CEA, DMA | TaxOnTax Advisory Ltd. | Edmonton | taxontax.com

09/29/2026

Event 8: Even famous families get audited. Prepared ones win.

When Ted Rogers, founder of Rogers Communications, passed away, his family's estate tax plan was challenged by the CRA using its most powerful anti-avoidance rule. In 2020, the Tax Court sided with the family. Every step of the plan had used the tax rules exactly as Parliament wrote them, set up well in advance.

Compare that with a company that moved itself offshore just weeks before cashing in a $16 million gain, hoping to escape tax on it. In 2026, the Court took that structure apart. Built in a hurry, right before the money moved, and it read that way.

Here's what matters for the farm families and business owners I work with: the same tools the Rogers family used, freezes, rollovers, reorganizations, are available to you. They're how a farm passes to the next generation without a crushing tax bill, and how a company gets ready for a sale years before a buyer appears.

The pattern from the courtroom is consistent. Plans built early, for real family and business reasons, hold up. Plans built in a panic don't.

If your company or farm structure hasn't been reviewed in five years, it's due.

Real cases from the Tax Court of Canada. General information, not advice for your situation.
TaxOnTax Advisory Ltd. | Edmonton, Alberta | taxontax.com

09/22/2026

Event 7: The owner who never read the returns

A family-run company's owners lived partly through the business. Personal spending mixed with corporate. Returns signed without being read, because the accountant handled everything.

When the CRA reassessed, it went back beyond the normal limits and added gross negligence penalties. In 2026, the Tax Court gave a split verdict: trusting the accountant helped soften some penalties, but never reviewing the returns failed the standard the law expects of a careful owner, and years the family thought were closed got reopened.

The rule of thumb from decades of these cases is simple. 'My accountant handles it' can save you from penalties. It will not save you from the tax, and it will not keep old years closed if the returns you signed were wrong.

The fixes are unglamorous and cheap. One corporate card that never buys groceries. A shareholder account reconciled yearly. Ten minutes reading the return before you sign it.

Owner-managers: when did you last actually read your corporate return before signing? Honest answers welcome.

We're past the halfway mark of the twelve events. The full model, with all the stories, is in my book, The 12Event Planning Model.

Real cases from the Tax Court of Canada. General information, not advice for your situation.
TaxOnTax Advisory Ltd. | Edmonton, Alberta | taxontax.com