The taxpayer's employer, General Motors of Canada Limited, assigned a new vehicle to the taxpayer and about 350 other senior managers or executives no less frequently than every three months for their personal and business use, but on the basis that they would identify shortcomings in the models and promote them to friends and acquaintances. The Minister authorized GM in 1982 to use a simplified method which treated the s. 6(1)(a) benefit from GMCL's payment of the vehicle operating costs as being equal to 50% of those costs.
Woods J upheld the Minister's reassessments of the taxpayer's 2008 and 2009 taxation years on the basis that the benefit under s. 6(1)(k) was equal to $0.24 per kilometer of personal use, which was assumed to be 20,004 kilometers per year. The enactment of s. 6(1)(k) in 1993 invalidated the 1982 authorization, and the taxpayer had not established any prima facie case as to the personal kilometers driven so as to displace the Minister's assumption on personal use. Furthermore, no designation to compute the benefit based on ½ the standby charge had been made in the relevant years as required in s. 6(1)(k).
See also summary under General Concepts - Estoppel.