税法和税务筹划一直以来都是热门的行业，由于近些年对于税务人才的需求越来越大，税法专业成为了当下最火爆的留学专业之一。发达国家由于税收和法律体系相对完善，法律的条文相较于其他国家而言也更加的细致和有操作性，因此，前往英、美亦或是加拿大等国攻读税法专业是一个不错的选择。
就拿美国来说吧，纽约大学和乔治敦大学一直以来都是攻读税法专业的大热学校。今天的范文就来谈谈税收筹划这个话题。由于各个国家都有自己独立的税收体系，今天我们将以加拿大2018年开始实施的Tax on Split Income（TOSI）为例来介绍如何为一个中产的加拿大家庭进行税收筹划。
TOSI的引入对很多的加拿大家庭每税务规划和税收成本的计算都产生了巨大的影响。总的来说，TOSI法则规定对于那些没有工作的人所取得的收入，比如从家族基金会取得的股票红利都适用于高税率，而对于那些有工作的人则适用低税率甚至不征税。加拿大引入该税收条款的目的是增加富裕阶层的税务负担并且保护中产阶层。但是，事实是否如此呢？我们还需要看具体的案例。
首先，我们来介绍一下今天Case ：
A dentist runs his medical practice through a corporation in Nova Scotia which is owned by his Family Trust. For 2018 the following is pertinent data for the Corporation:
- Corporate Taxable Income $785,000
- Small Business Deduction available$500,00
- Active Business Income $285,00
- Dividends paid to Family trust $450,000
The client is not available for questions as he is vacationing and therefore, you may have to make some assumption in attempting to answer his questions. Please state any of these assumptions. The beneficiaries for the Family Trust include the dentist, his spouse, his 21-year-old daughter,his 19-year-old son and his 14-year-old daughter. The dentist has taken a salary of $200,000 from the corporation for 2018; none of the other family members have taxable income for 2018 or any deductions for 2018.
接下来是具体的questions：
Q1. Please determine what his corporate taxes will be for 2018 based on the data he provided？
Corporate taxes for 2018 = 500,000*3% (provincial tax) +28,5000*16%(provincial tax)+785,000*10% (federal tax) = $139,100
上面计算所用的税率参考下表
Q2. Help him in deciding how to allocate the dividends paid to his family trust and what the tax consequences would be for each of the family members based on your recommendation, which of course would be made in consideration of the new Tax on Split Income rules？
这个问题显然是比较复杂的，由于这对夫妇年龄低于65周岁，并且他们的第一和第二个孩子的年龄都大于17周岁，基于这些基本信息我们需要做一些合理的假设。假定，这两个已经在上大学的孩子都有一份兼职的工作并且平均每周工作20小时，那么每一个家庭成员基于TOSI税法准则需要具体负担的税费为：
1) The dentist：dividends or other income (such as redemption proceeds on the redemption of his preferred shares) received by the dentist will not be subject to TOSI because he was actively engaged on a regular, continuous, and substantial basis in the business in at least five prior taxation years;
2) His wife: dividends received by his spouse will be subject to TOSI and taxed at the top marginal rate (thereby eliminating any tax benefit of income splitting with her);
3) The 21-year-olddaughter: dividends received by his 21-year-old daughter will be subject to the reasonableness test to determine how much, if any, of those dividends will be subject to TOSI and taxed at the top marginal rate (thereby potentially eliminating any tax benefit of income splitting with her);
4) The 19-year-old son: dividends received by his 19-year-old son will be subject to the reasonableness test to determine how much, if any, of those dividends will besubject to TOSI and taxed at the top marginal rate (thereby potentially eliminating any tax benefit of income splitting with her);
5) The 14-year-olddaughter: dividends received by 14-year-old daughter will be subject to TOSI and taxed at the top marginal rate (thereby eliminating any tax benefit of income splitting with her);
接下来是为这个家庭提出的税收筹划建议，由于他们最小的孩子小于17周岁并且没有工作，根据TOSI规则小于17 岁的公民收到的dividend需要按照最高的税率来支付税金即45.3%，因此这个牙医需要避免让最小的孩子收到任何dividend收入。最优的方案是allocate家族基金收到的红利给自己和自己两个有兼职工作的孩子。或者，更极端的情况则是，我们假设这个家庭除了牙医本人外其他成员都不工作，那么则可以把所有$450,000 的dividend都划到男主人自己的名下，由于他有一份稳定的全职工作，则可以避免为这$450,000 的红利收入支付个人所得税。
情况1：As a result of the new TOSI rule, the dentist should allocate the dividend of $450,000 to himself, his 21-year-old daughter and his 19-year-old son to enjoy the tax benefit ofincome splitting. While allocating the dividend to his spouse and 14-year-olddaughter will lead to a marginal tax rate of 45.3%. Since the dentist has drawn salary of $200,000 from the company, he should allocate $450,000 evenly to his 21-year-old daughter and his 19-year-old son to enjoy the tax benefit.
情况2：If we assume a more extreme but also possible case that all their children are still in school and not worked an average of 20 hours per week while the business is operating; In this scenario, the physician’s spouse and their 3 children will be all subject to TOSI and taxed at the top marginal rate. Therefore, he should only allocate the dividend of $450,000 to himself.
Q3. He is scheduling a meeting with his local Member of Parliament, and to prepare for this, he is interested in what your recommendation would have been if these new rules？
Under the old rules, dividends paid by the company to the Family Trust and distributed by the Family Trust to the three children were taxed at significantly lower rates than if they had been paid to the dentist and taxed at him comparatively high rates (and in some cases the dividends were not subject to any income tax by virtue of various tax credits available to the daughters). Therefore, with the new rules, the increase in his totally family personal taxes is $450000*45.3%=$203850
Q4. He was reading that these new rules were aimed at the wealthy not the middle class, he would like some very brief comments from you as to your opinion on whether these rules are only affecting the wealthy and not the middle class, he is going to use your opinion in his discussion with the Member of Parliament, so he asked that you provide him a good understanding of why you came to such an opinion.
The new rule is not only affecting the wealthy but also affecting the middle class. At a first glance, using TOSI, the government is trying to protect the benefit of working class and the middle class as they do not have the easy access to tax saving facilities compared to the wealthy class.
However, having a second thought, this could actually achieve the opposite and hurt the benefit of middle class. With the US is currently cutting it corporate taxes, the Canadian companies/wealthy class would have the incentive to relocate to the US or shift their profit outside of Canada, as a consequence, the employment opportunities provided by these wealthy class and their company would be reduced and causing some of the middle class lose their jobs.
It is not hard to see that with the new TOSI rule, the only party that would benefit from the rule will be the tax planning professionals as people would have increasing demand for tax planning.
Q5. Finally, the dentist expects some new inputs to help him better allocate family wealth, if you have any tax planning ideas for him please include them?
Pay reasonable salaries to family members
Let his family members to get involved in the business operations (such as his wife) and leave records so that to be excluded from TOSI
Prescribed rate loan strategies
Establishing complicated pension trust such as RCA, IPP and etc.
通过对这个case的分析，同学们可以看到税收筹划对于一个家庭or企业来说是多么的重要。筹划合理可以为这个家庭大大降低税务负担，而相反则会增加这个家庭的税负。尽管每个国家的税收体系有所不同，但是世界各国所设立的税种和基于这些税种而衍生出的税收筹划的方式还是大同小异的。因此，这个加拿大税收筹划的案例应该有一定的借鉴作用。今后我们还会介绍其他国家更多不同的税务类案例，希望能给同学们提供更多的答题思路。
