Do you have charitable gifts in your Will?

Do you have charitable gifts in your Will?

The great things that you wish to accomplish with charitable gifts in your Will may be affected by changes to Canadian tax rules in Bill C-43 that come into effect January 1, 2016.


The new rules are generally more advantageous to gifts in Wills than the existing framework. They allow executors to allocate charitable tax credits to the donor’s final tax return, the previous year’s return, and/or any of the first three years of estate returns. Also, charitable gifts will also be valued on the day the gift is received by the charity. This is a major change – previously, the gift was receipted based on its fair market value on the donor’s the date of death.

You should also know that the first three years of an estate are now called a Graduated Rate Estate, or GRE. This means that income taxes paid by an estate in it’s first three years are based on a graduated scale. After three years estate income is taxed at the highest marginal income tax rate.

Your estate may be impacted if your charitable gifts are distributed after the three year GRE period. If this happens, the charitable tax receipt can only be applied against that year’s estate tax return, and can’t be allocated retroactively to the tax returns of the deceased or any of the years of the GRE’s existence.

If you want to donate appreciated assets to charities, the capital gains tax exemption for gifted property will no longer be available to the estate after the three year GRE period. This may result in smaller settlements to all beneficiaries due to unintended additional income taxes owing by the estate.

In many circumstances, the new GRE will be a non-issue. However, it may become expensive if your estate is complex and takes more than three years to settle, since your estate can lose the advantages of the GRE. For example, this may happen when charitable gifts are delayed until your spouse dies, or where other entities are involved such as corporations or family businesses that may need more time to be settled or restructured. The possibility of challenges to the Will may be another concern.

In fact, anything that may delay an estate from winding up before the 3 year GRE period expires may become an unintended and expensive situation for an estate that expects to use charitable donation tax credits and other tax-friendly strategies available only to the GRE. If your valuable charitable tax credits are forced to go unused, this will almost certainly throw a wrench into your best-laid estate plans.

If nothing else, Bill C-43 is a compelling reason to get proper legal and financial advice on your circumstances today to determine whether any changes should be made to your Will and to your current investments strategies to ensure that all of your legacy intentions will be met tomorrow.