On March 21, 2013, the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed (with costs) the application for leave to appeal in the case of Donna M. Johnson v. Her Majesty The Queen.

The issue in Johnson was the tax treatment of receipts from a Ponzi scheme. The Tax Court (2011 TCC 540) allowed the taxpayer's appeal and held that the receipts were not income from a source for the purpose of paragraph 3(a) of the Income Tax Act. The Federal Court of Appeal (2012 FCA 253) reversed the lower court's decision, allowing the Crown's appeal.

I commented on the decisions of the Tax Court and the Federal Court of Appeal in the March 2013 Ontario Bar Association Tax Section newsletter.

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