 | Thursday, July 23, 2020 – By Benjamin Blum | | Here’s what you need to know to get the day started: | | | Hundreds of thousands of Canadians could get a tax break for working from home during pandemic | | | Hundreds of thousands of Canadians could be eligible for a lucrative tax deduction as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. But just how many get to claim that deduction could depend on their employers, and on how the Canada Revenue Agency deals with a series of questions raised by the sudden changes that have compelled millions of Canadians to work from home.
It's called the "work-space-in-the-home" deduction and you can claim it if you work from home more than 50 per cent of the time, or if you have a separate home office and use it to meet clients. Either way, your employer has to certify that working from home is a condition of your employment. According to the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), 174,210 Canadians took advantage of the deduction on their 2018 tax returns, claiming an average per person of $1,561.
The deduction allows those who qualify for it to reduce their tax bills by claiming a portion of their household expenses — such as utilities, cleaning and rent. Normally, the number of people who can claim the deduction is limited. To qualify, you either have to spend more than 50 per cent of your time working from home, or you have to use a home office exclusively for work and regularly meet clients there.
The current rules require anyone claiming the deduction to get their employer to fill out a form — T2200 — certifying that working from home is a condition of employment. Without that form, the claim would be rejected, said the CRA. But that was before the pandemic hit. By mid-April, 3.3 million Canadians had moved out of their regular workplaces and were working from home, according to Statistics Canada's June Labour Force Survey. While that number dropped by 400,000 in June, millions of Canadians are still working from home.
By September, those sent home to work in March will have worked at least half the year at home — potentially putting them in a position to qualify for the deduction. Armando Minicucci, a partner with the accounting firm Grant Thornton, said he expects a big increase in the number of Canadians able to claim a deduction for turning part of their home into an office. "I would say the number would have to be in the hundreds of thousands," he said. The pandemic has raised a number of questions that Canada's tax experts have asked the CRA to clarify, Minicucci said.
The Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada (CPA Canada) said it would like the CRA to clarify whether the "more than 50 per cent of the time" benchmark is calculated for the tax year, or for the period the employee was required to work from home. It also said the CRA should consider simplifying the process, but officials from the CRA and the Finance Department told CBC News there are no plans currently to change the rules on the home workspace deduction. | | | | | Search your feelings, you know it to be true... | | |  | (Daniel Knighton/Getty Images) | | | | Cosplayer Christopher Canole, wearing the guise of 'Dude Vader,' poses at a Comic-Con memorial in San Diego, Calif. This year's Comic-Con International was converted into a virtual event, Comic-Con@Home, due the COVID-19 pandemic. | | | | | | | | | In brief | | | A former CBC employee is speaking out about his experience of hearing two colleagues at The Fifth Estate, the public broadcaster’s flagship investigative program, use the N-word during an editorial discussion last year. "I couldn't have ever imagined that would have happened, where somebody would have thought that it was OK to use that word," said Dexter Brown, who was working as an associate producer with the program. "Disappointed with what took place — and a bit embarrassed as well, being the only Black person in the room. It's quite surreal." He is coming forward as issues of race have shifted to the forefront of societal debate, with the lack of diversity in the media under the microscope and recent revelations that the N-word was used on two occasions by CBC host Wendy Mesley during editorial meetings at The Weekly. After Brown later raised it with the show's executive producer and a human resources manager, the public broadcaster called in an external law firm to do an investigation that ran for months. When the investigation was complete, Brown said, he was provided few details of how the matter was resolved. Several senior CBC executives approached for comment declined interview requests, offering instead a written statement through head of public affairs Chuck Thompson, who cited confidentiality agreements. Read more on this story here.
It's been a bad couple of weeks for COVID-19 in Alberta. From July 7 to 21, the province recorded the most new cases, per capita, of all provinces, according to federally compiled data. Alberta also saw the highest percentage of positive tests over that time, and now has the highest per-capita rate of active cases in Canada. Its hospitalization rate is on the rise and second only to Quebec. Alberta has five broad health zones and, for the first time in the pandemic, significant numbers of new cases have been cropping up in all five at the same time, with the largest surge in the Calgary zone. With all this going on, it was striking to see provincial leaders strike a less dire tone this week, writes CBC’s Robson Fletcher. Over the course of the pandemic, the province's official messaging has drifted from girding Albertans for a coming storm to reassuring them that it's safe to go outside again — as long you're careful. The foreboding tone has waned recently, even as the active caseload has grown. Read more about what’s happening in the province here.
This year has already been particularly deadly in terms of people killed in encounters with police in Canada — and Black and Indigenous people continue to be over-represented among the fatalities. There were 30 people killed after police used force in Canada in the first half of 2020, which is the full-year average for such deaths over the past 10 years (the deadliest year was 2016, when 40 people were killed). This is according to the Deadly Force database, updated and maintained by CBC’s own researchers. The database shows Black and Indigenous people are disproportionately represented among the victims compared to their share of the overall population. The data also finds most of those killed in police encounters suffer from mental illness or substance abuse. There is no government database listing deaths at the hands of the police available to the public in Canada, so CBC News created its own. CBC’s research librarians have collected detailed information on each case, such as ethnicity, the role of mental illness or substance abuse, the type of weapon used and the police service involved, to create a picture of who is dying in police encounters. Read more about the database’s findings here.
Finance Minister Bill Morneau is facing calls to resign after telling MPs that he cut a cheque for over $41,000 to repay travel expenses incurred by the WE organization related to two 2017 trips his family took with the organization. Morneau said he wrote the cheque Wednesday — prior to going before the House of Commons finance committee to answer questions about his government's decision to task WE with administering a $912-million student volunteering program. "I expected and always had intended to pay the full cost of these trips, and it was my responsibility to make sure that was done," Morneau told MPs on the committee. "Not doing so, even unknowingly, is not appropriate. I want to apologize for this error on my part." The revelations come as the Liberal government is under fire for its close ties to the charity organization it chose to administer its student volunteer program, the Canada student service grant (CSSG). Neither Morneau nor Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — who also has family ties to WE — recused themselves from cabinet discussions on awarding the contract, which would have seen WE receive more than $43.5 million to oversee the program. Both Morneau and Trudeau are being investigated by the federal ethics watchdog for possible violations of conflict of interest rules. Read more about the situation here.
The Tokyo Olympics are scheduled to begin one year from today after the Games were postponed earlier this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. For those athletes who have already qualified — which according to the International Olympic Committee is about half of the participants — and those who haven't, there are still so many unknowns. The Canadian rowing pairs duo of Jenny Casson and Jill Moffatt, for example, hoped to book a ticket to the Games via one last-chance qualifier before everything stopped at the beginning of March. "I don't really want to sit around and cry about it. I want to move on as quickly as I can and get ready for the next year, but it definitely was hard at first to switch that mindset," Moffatt said. The two are finally back on the water again, having to endure a rigorous set of protocols just to get their boat on the water at their training facility in Victoria — and as it stands right now, they will get their final chance to qualify for the Olympics next May. Read more about how Canadian athletes are staying ready here.
Now for some good news to start your Thursday: What began as a landscaping project to deal with drainage issues in a Saskatoon front yard is now a hobbit hole so realistic you might be tempted to pop in for second breakfast. "We had a lot of leftover soil that was piled up," said Dr. Scott Harder, recalling that years-old landscaping project. "All of a sudden one day, hobbits moved in." Now visitors come to the City Park neighbourhood to greet Lily and Raven Took, the hobbits Harder says live in the little hole in his front yard. The Took home is modest, built into the ground to stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It's solid and welcoming, with a bright blue door. "It has been just delightful to see how many people have stopped by to comment, and just the laughs, the smiles, a lot of positive feedback," said Harder. Read more about Saskatoon’s very own Shire here. | | | | |  | The race for a coronavirus vaccine, explained | There's new hope this week in the quest for a coronavirus vaccine. Trials for two vaccines, one at Oxford University and another being worked on here in Canada, are showing some promising results. And they're just two possible front-runners from scores of vaccines being tested around the globe. Today, Emily Chung, the creator of CBC's vaccine tracker, discusses where we are on the path to approving vaccines, and what bumps may lie in the road ahead.
Listen to today's episode | | | Today in history: July 23 | | | 1904: Charles Menches of St. Louis is said to have created the ice cream cone. The walk-away cone debuts at that year's St. Louis World's Fair.
1944: The Canadian Army goes into action in northern France during the Second World War as a separate unit for the first time. Until then, it had been under British command.
1962: The first live TV broadcast linking North America and Europe via the "Telstar" satellite includes programming from CBC.
1967: A week of deadly race-related rioting that claimed 43 lives erupts in Detroit after police raid a Black-owned nightspot.
1982: Actor Vic Morrow and two child actors die when they are struck by a helicopter during filming of the movie The Twilight Zone. Director John Landis and four others were later acquitted of charges in the deaths.
2000: Tiger Woods, 24, becomes the fifth — and youngest — golfer to win the sport's Grand Slam when he scores a runaway, eight-stroke victory at the British Open in St. Andrews, Scotland. | | | (With files from CBC News, The Canadian Press, The Associated Press and Reuters) | | | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
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