What am I teaching next?
In the Fall 2024 term, I will be teaching the introductory tax course and corporate taxation (both in English). See you in the fall!
Writing a term paper?
My Really Basic Rules for Writing Good Papers in Law School will help you make it better
Introduction to Tax Policy theory:
Tax opinion letter
Units of federal legislation
This handy chart is essential to anyone writing a legal memo in Canada involving federal income tax law + any other federal statutory regime.
It tells you how to identify a specific part of legislation in Canada.
For example, if you are looking at a provision of a federal Act online that starts with a lower case roman numeral in parentheses, you will know that you are looking at something that is called a “subparagraph” in English and un “sous-alinéa” en Français.
When writing out a specific provision, it is customary to state only the unit associated with the last numeral according to its format. For example if you are looking at the rule that says to include in income the value of an employee benefit related to the use of an automobile, you would not refer to “subparagraph (iii) of paragraph (a) of subsection (1) of section 6” or “le sous-alinéa (iii) de l’alinéa a) du paragraphe (1) de l’article 6). That’s way too clunky.
Instead, you would refer to the relevant provision as “subparagraph 6(1)(a)(iii)” aka “le sous-alinéa 6(1)a)(iii)
Knowing the correct unit of legislation will help you figure out where to look when someone points you to a provision, and vice versa.