Should Canada's Department of Finance Learn A Lesson From Kansas?

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Cyndee Todgham Cherniak

Canadian sales tax practitioners and companies engaged in the financial services industry are well aware of the proposed amendments to the "financial services" definition in December 2009 which were implemented in Canadian law in the 2010 federal budget.

Now for my Kansas lesson.  In May 2009, the State of Kansas implemented a change to its sale and use tax refund statute on limitations reducing the limitation period from 3 years to 1 year.  They are now reversing that decision.  Effective July 1, 2011, the limitation period is returning to 3 years (retroactively - as if the change never happened).  Kansas had made the change to reduce the workload of government workers who process the refund claims (and to save money by not paying refunds).  The unintended result was that people filed their refund claims.

What can the Department of Finance learn from this? There is nothing wrong with returning undoing an amendment that was a mistake in the first place.  Undoing a bad amendment is a good outcome.

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