CRA provided income tax rulings respecting the creation of an additional class of “Class A” units of a mutual fund trust (the “Trust”) - which would essentially have identical attributes to those of the existing units except that they would indirectly bear all of the trailer fees paid to securities dealers, who would only sell the Class A units to further subscribers and not the existing units.
The trailer fees respecting the Class A were to be funded out of additional management fees charged by the general partner of an indirect real estate subsidiary LP of the Trust to that LP, with the resulting reduction in distributions paid by that LP up the chain to the Trust being tracked so as to result in a pro tanto reduction in the distributions paid on the Class A units relative to the existing units. CRA did not comment on any GST/HST aspects of this planning.