The taxpayer lent money to a related company. In 1998, the taxpayer wrote off the loan as a bad debt, mistakenly reporting it as both a capital loss and an income loss. The defect in the return was not discovered until after the limitations period. The taxpayer subsequently lent more money to the related company, part of which was used to pay off the previous debt to the taxpayer.
The Minister argued that the related company's payment to the taxpayer was income under s. 12(1)(i) for repayment of a debt for which a deduction had been made in a preceding year, but Pizzitelli J. accepted the taxpayer's position that it was a capital gain under s. 40(1). Paragraph 12(1)(i) was inapplicable because its position in subdivision b of Division B of Part 1 makes it clear that the paragraph only applies to debts in the nature of "Income or Loss from a Business or Property," and the debt in question was clearly a capital asset. It was irrelevant that the taxpayer had erroneously treated the bad debt as an income loss in a previous year.