OTTAWA — Farms with property held within legal trusts have a new paperwork hassle this tax season — and each year going forward. They have until April 2, 2024, to submit a so-called T3 return to the Canada Revenue Agency for each of their trusts, although OFA farm policy analyst Ben Lefort cautions farmers to check with their lawyer or accountant to confirm if they have any question about the rule applying to them.
“We don’t want to create a situation where farmers hear about this, they get worried and then they file a T3 return when maybe they didn’t need to, and they have now inadvertently or unintentionally created a trust where they didn’t really want one to exist,” Lefort said.
However, generally speaking, farmers must file if they or their farm holds any assets inside a trust, a legal arrangement that’s not uncommon. Previously, a T3 only needed to be submitted to the CRA when the trust had some sort of “taxable event” or sale that generated money. Now the exercise must happen annually no matter what. The unintentional failure to comply by deadline nets a fine of $25 per day, to a maximum of $2,500. But if the CRA believes that the filing was intentionally withheld, “the penalty can be up to 5 % of the value of all the assets in the trust, which, if you’re holding a family trust would be quite a lot of money,” Lefort said.
He pointed out that trusts are commonly employed as part of farm succession planning. Farmers may, for example, put certain pieces of land into the ownership of trusts to prevent them from automatically merging with other land parcels that also belong to the farm.
Lefort will deliver a presentation on the new trust-reporting requirement March 21 at the Leeds County Federation of Agriculture’s annual general meeting. Doors open 6:30 p.m. at the Elgin Municipal Hall (47 Main Street, Elgin). The session begins at 7 p.m
Source : Farmersforum