“Capture 22” isn’t really a authorized phrase, but as a blanket time period for paradox in regulation and govt, it is really rather common. It receives utilized a good deal these days by tax legal professionals seeking to plot out their obligations to their clientele and the legislation underneath the federal government’s revised obligatory disclosure routine.
The new required disclosure principles (MDRs), which took impact on June 22, significantly broaden the number of company transactions that need to be noted to the Canada Revenue Company (CRA) below S. 237.3 and 237.4 of the Earnings Tax Act (ITA). They increase the selection of reportable transactions and introduce a new group of reportable transactions — “notifiable transactions” — described in a govt backgrounder doc as “both of those transactions that the CRA has found to be abusive, and transactions recognized as transactions of interest (i.e., where by extra information is needed to ascertain if a transaction is abusive).”
For tax legal professionals, the significant trouble with the new MDRs is how they pull the occupation into the process. The MDRs require that taxpayers, promoters and selected advisers — which includes legal gurus — report transactions that fall less than the new policies to the feds.
That prerequisite threatens to put attorneys in a pretty uncomfortable area, ethically and lawfully. Suggestions to consumers is included by solicitor-client privilege, a bedrock principle of the lawful method and of lawyers’ skilled codes of conduct. Solicitor-customer privilege guarantees clients can explore their alternatives with counsel freely and with no dread.
With out that assurance, consumers may possibly be inclined to maintain again facts. And with no being aware of what the consumer is aware, the lawyer’s task turns into considerably additional complicated, if not impossible.
“The method depends on consumers telling their lawyers almost everything, remaining open and forthright,” claims Jack Silverson, a associate in tax regulation at Osler. “Attorneys can’t signify their clients quite with out all the specifics.”

Conflict among legal professionals and purchasers is baked into the revised MDRs. The new regulation features a person modest concession to solicitor-customer privilege — it states that any data that is “acceptable to think” is topic to privilege does not have to be disclosed to the CRA.


But that pushes legal professionals into a blind alley. Below risk of federal penalty, they have to come to a decision irrespective of whether the info is protected by privilege. The laws would make parties who fall short to disclose beneath the new regulations issue to fines of up to $110,000, in addition to the “standard offence” penalties in the ITA — fines of up to $25,000 or imprisonment for up to 12 months.

If lawyers and their purchasers disagree on what really should be disclosed, their interests stop to align and the professional relationship breaks down.
“These new provisions set attorneys in constant hazard of a conflict. Merely inquiring them to provide details that may perhaps or may not be coated by solicitor-consumer privilege, topic to sanctions, places them in a conflict,” claims Élisabeth Robichaud, a spouse in tax legislation at Davies.
“It generates the possible for conflict with the client’s wishes. Let us say you are symbolizing a customer and figure out a specific disclosure would not violate SCP, but your customer does not agree with you. What do you do then?”
“Typically, the customer will get their lawyer’s assistance and decides, dependent on their threat tolerance, how to report a transaction,” says Silverson. “It is the client’s selection alone. But with these new procedures, the law company itself faces a possibility and has to choose that chance into thing to consider. The pursuits of lawyer and customer may not line up.”
Only trying to comply with the law could set a lawyer in a traditional Capture-22 predicament. “Basically filling out the disclosure type could possibly contain disclosing legal information — to report or not report,” says Silverson. “So how can you fill out that form at all?
“So the fail-safe and sound the authorities designed into the law is not adequate. How do you withhold disclosure without having declaring ‘because,’ and how do you do that without having violating privilege?”
The contradictions built into the regulation border on the ludicrous, suggests Robichaud. “You could see legal professionals submitting disclosure kinds confirming they are knowledgeable of information they are not able to disclose owing to solicitor-shopper privilege — not even the identify of the client,” she suggests.
“The purpose of these regulations is to ensure tax authorities are knowledgeable early on of any transactions they want to identify. But putting lawyers in a posture where by they have to file blank types — I fall short to see how that’s valuable in any way.”
There is certainly a hazard that the straightforward act of a lawyer informing CRA of suggestions given to a client on no matter if a transaction is notifiable could waive privilege, says Silverson.
“The privilege is the client’s, not the attorneys, and you are not able to waive it piecemeal,” he states. “There is a possibility that disclosure could imply waiving privilege more than all the things. It’s certainly a danger.”
He provides that lawyers dealing with penalties below the new legislation would obtain them selves in another wicked bind. How do they defend on their own without having deploying privileged shopper data?
“Do you violate the act, or do you violate the code of skilled perform?” he states. “Which a person do you least want to be offside with?”
The new procedures are in a holding sample at the instant. The Federation of Legislation Societies of Canada filed an software with the B.C. Supreme Courtroom arguing that making use of the MDRs to legal professionals breaches the Canadian Constitution of Legal rights and Freedoms mainly because of the risk they pose to solicitor-shopper privilege. The CBA’s Board of Administrators has approved seeking leave to intervene in the issue.
The court docket agreed to give legal professionals a short-term exemption from the new rules right until it decides whether or not to extend the injunction until finally the constitutional argument is settled.
In the meantime, suggests Silverson, tax attorneys would be clever to get the guidance they give their clients in creating — in scenario they have to protect themselves in courtroom down the road.
“It is heading to be substantially more durable to guard privilege for suggestions offered more than the cell phone,” he suggests.
“You want a penned file of the advice offered, the points, the pitfalls and expected added benefits, in scenario the Crown worries privilege in court docket and efficiently claims, ‘We really don’t consider you.'”

Doug Beazley is a standard contributor primarily based in Ottawa.