In This Issue #179 January 31, 2014

We are pleased to announce that Taryn Moore has become a Partner in the firm effective January 1, 2014.

We are pleased to announce that Andrew Brunton has become a Partner in the firm effective January 1, 2014.

Why did you become a lawyer?

When I was a teenager, my father and grandfather caught me using “facts” and “proof” to win an argument with them. Until then, those were considered four-letter words in my family since it was well known that facts ruin any good discussion. One day they suggested that I would make a good lawyer and I never turned back.

 There are a wide variety of tax and non-tax elements to be considered as part of the estate planning process for business owners, such as capital gains planning, minimizing taxes on death and the use of trusts, to name a few. Winery owners are often in a unique position because, in addition to all of the usual considerations, they may be able to take advantage of some of the “farming” provisions available in the Income Tax Act.

The Supreme Court of British Columbia recently held that a party that submitted misleading plans to a municipality to obtain a building permit had no remedy in court even though it may have suffered damages.

Your Estate Planning process is underway. You know that you want to provide for a charity in your Estate Plan, but you have no particular affiliation with any charity. You do, however, have one criteria...

Recently in Bosworth v. Jurock, 2013 BCCA 4, the British Columbia Court of Appeal affirmed that where a developer has misrepresented facts to a group of strata owners, a strata owner need not rely on the strata corporation to commence proceedings and may obtain class certification on behalf of all the other owners.

 As part of the Minister of Finance’s effort to crack down on offshore tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance, on January 15, 2014 the Canada Revenue Agency launched the Offshore Tax Informant Program.

Alf Kempf is the new President of the Okanagan College Foundation, having accepted the three-year position after serving as Vice President and Chair of the Foundation's Advancement Committee, focused on marketing and fundraising.

Another day, another Google Glass run-in.