As someone who has been around the life insurance industry in a professional and personal capacity for several decades, I am always curious about what motivates people to buy or not buy life insurance. I understand that few people spend time thinking about the consequences of low-probability events and are…
Category: Business Succession Planning
Total 54 Posts
In past blogs, we discussed income splitting arrangements available to individuals who wish to loan funds to his/her lower income spouse or adult child, or in the case of minor children, a discretionary family trust. Such loans would be used to invest in income producing properties such as marketable securities,…
The freezing of current share value so that your chosen successors can easily participate in the future growth of your enterprise is a common estate planning technique. What if the value of the frozen shares now exceeds the value of the enterprise as a whole? I wrote about this sometime…
Court of Appeal interpreted an option to purchase a business set out in the deceased’s last will.
I was reading recently that approximately $30-trillion in assets will be shifting from one generation to the next across North America in the next few decades, according to consulting firm Accenture. A couple of years ago, I wrote about gifting cash or assets during one’s lifetime as an alternative method…
Due in particular to the outcome of some recent court cases, many have feared that formal applications to rectify plans would receive a favorable hearing only in the event of obvious clerical errors in the documentation. However a recent court case in the Supreme Court of British Columbia demonstrated that…
Control is an important concept for applying certain income tax rules and valuation issues (amongst others) when dealing with corporations, with serious implications to current and future (and estate) planning scenarios. De jure control refers to legal control of a corporation, which requires a look at shareholdings. Control in fact,…
When a member of an employer sponsored pension plan ceases employment, the member may receive a lump sum payment for the commuted value of their pension rights, exposing that member to a significant tax bill, as only a limited amount of the payment can be transferred to an RRSP. There…
Under The Income Tax Act (“ITA”), if a taxpayer disposes of property that is all or substantially all of the assets used in an active business for consideration that includes shares of a corporation, the shares are deemed to be capital property. The disposal is considered to be a capital…
All business owners face the task of trying to determine what to do with their businesses when they retire or in the event of a sudden death: sell to the next generation, sell to a 3rd party or sell the assets and wind-up the business. According to the Canadian Federation…