On July 18, 2014, TEI submitted a letter to the Canadian Revenue Agency and Canadian Department of Finance expressing appreciation for proposed changes to the GST/HST joint venture election. The new rules will expand the availability of the election to all joint ventures engaged in commercial activities where all participants of the joint venture are also engaged exclusively in commercial activities. The Institute's letter cautioned CRA and the Department of Finance against requiring all electing joint ventures to file a prescribed form with the government arguing the administrative burden would outweigh any compliance benefits.
The letter was prepared under the aegis of TEI's Canadian Commodity Tax Committee, whose chair is Robert J. Smith of McKesson Canada. Contributing substantially to the development of TEI's comments were Dwaine Arnason of Shell Canada Ltd., Carole S. Levesque of PennWest, and Kevin Thom of ConocoPhillips Canada. Daniel B. De Jong of the Institute's legal staff coordinated the development of the Institute's comments.