https://decision.tcc-cci.gc.ca/tcc-cci/decisions/en/item/458749/index.do
Singh v. The Queen (December 17, 2019 – 2019 TCC 283, Russell J.).
Précis: The taxpayer was assessed unreported income from 2158357 Ontario Inc. in 2009 and 2010. His position was that the amounts were loan repayments and that the years in question were statute-barred. The Tax Court rejected his evidence of loan repayments and sustained the taxes and penalties, opening up the 2009 and 2010 taxation years.
Decision: The Court, in a nutshell, found, the evidence of the taxpayer that these amounts represented loan repayments simply not credible:
[17] This is documentation of a profoundly unprofessional nature. Why is there a complete dearth of business-comparable documentation to confirm transactions supposedly involving in total almost $170,000? Why are they called owner advances and owner drawings and not repayments? Why is there no banking documentation whatsoever from the corporate payer, or even more surprisingly, no corporate financial statements, evidencing these transactions? How does a motel generate cash of such amounts? Why were the amounts all said to have been paid in cash and not be cheque? Why have we no banking records on the part of JS pertaining to these substantial payments? Why have we no financial statements of 215 Ont. confirming the purported shareholder loan itself? How are we to know that such payments came from 215 Ont., with which JS testified he had no day to day business involvement, and not from 149 Ont., which owned and operated the banquets hall business, with which JS was wholly engaged as a salaried employee in addition to being a 50% shareholder. In this regard it is noted that it is not incumbent upon the Minister, in concluding there was unreported income, to also determine or speculate as to the source of such income (LaCroix, paragraph 18).
[18] One may query why JS would not have had these payments clearly, properly and professionally evidenced by appropriate and usual banking, financial and corporate documentation, as being shareholder loan repayments if that is what they were? If such documentation did exist, and had been entered in evidence, this appeal would most likely have resolved much more favourably for JS.
IV. Conclusion:
[19] However, in the absence of such documentation and given the highly questionable nature of the "receipts" provided, I have little recourse but to find that that there was unreported income as assessed (I have no reason to prefer any amounts than those reassessed), and I consider the explanation of the assessed unreported income (basically, 215 Ont. shareholder loan repayments) to be not credible.
Accordingly the Court sustained the taxes and penalties, opening up the 2009 and 2010 taxation years.