The applicant participated in a widely-marketed gifting tax shelter in 2013. CRA put on hold the assessment of all 2013 returns claiming a credit under the gifting tax shelter in which the taxpayer participated, along with three others until it had audited those tax shelters.
The applicant was unsuccessful in having a class action certified for all the resident participants in the four tax shelters who had filed 2013 returns, not provided a waiver to the Minister and who had not been assessed based on their returns not having been assessed with due dispatch.
The exclusion of taxpayers assessed before the hearing was "illogical or arbitrary" as they "share[d] the same interest in the resolution of the common issue" (para. 57): Rule 334.1.6(1)(b). Furthermore, unanswered questions about possible third-party funding of the applicant raised "concerns about the person who is actually controlling the litigation" (para. 76) and there were deficiencies in the applicant's litigation plan including three alternative described methods for notification of other class members, and the specification of an hourly rate for counsel which was insufficient for individual class members to determine the monthly amounts payable by them (paras. 81, 83): Rule 334.16(1)(e).