Sodecia Canada Investments Inc. v. The King, 2024 TCC 40 -- summary under Subsection 244(14)

The taxpayer argued that an assessment of it dated June 8, 2017 was only mailed, at the request of its agent, on June 6, 2022, so that its Notice of Objection thereto was timely. In granting the Crown’s motion to dismiss the taxpayer’s appeal pursuant to Rule 53(1)(d) (“no reasonable grounds for appeal”), Smith J first found (following the four-step approach in Mpamugo, 2016 TCC 215, aff’d 2017 FCA 136) that the Minister had, through affidavits (coming within s. 244(10)) of CRA employees indicating that there were no abnormalities appearing in the CRA records regarding the preparation and sending of the related batch of assessments, established, on balance, that the assessment had been mailed on June 8, 2017. Furthermore, the taxpayer had not rebutted the presumption under s. 244(14) that the assessment had been mailed on its stated date in light of some gaps in the taxpayer’s evidence, including an office move that “raise[d] the possibility that the envelope containing the Assessment was simply put aside to be dealt with at a point in time and possibly misplaced or forgotten” (para. 80).