The CRA has released recently the 2019 version C of its T3010 Registered Charity Information Return. The major changes deal with replacing political activities with “public policy dialogue and development activities” (PPDDAs). As a result of Finance’s 2018 changes CRA no longer asks for much information on “public policy dialogue and development activities”. CRA asks whether your charity did PPDDAs and give you a paragraph to describe the PPDDAs and how they relate to your purposes but don’t ask how much you spent on them. So when a billionaire’s foundation spends $500 million on this type of political activity – you probably will not be able to easily detect it. Remember we are all created equal – some are just more equal than others. In fairness to billionaires, it was not billionaires asking for this change – it was mainly a few progressive groups.
Here is the new T3010 (2019) and the fillable T3010 (2019).
Some other changes include:
- removing the “Place bar code label here” as CRA does not use bar code labels and is trying to have the look and feel of the paper T3010 be as similar as possible to the electronic version of the T3010. Since June 2019 you can electronically file your T3010 through the CHAMP system
- instead of saying “in the space below, describe” they just say describe – probably a change as a result of CHAMP – I guess you could be filling in the form upside down on a tablet and saying “in the space below” may be confusing!
- they are also not asking whether any funds came from outside of Canada that was directed to be spent on political activities – neither the political activities that were funded or the amount – I am sure the Conservative Senators are going to be happy about that one!
- they are not asking for political activities the way in which political activities were carried out (eg. social media, publications etc) and resources used (such as staff, volunteers, financial, property).
- The Privacy Statement has been updated to include “The social insurance number (SIN) is collected under subsection 237 of the Act and is used for identification purposes”.
- CRA no longer lists the “Form TF725, Registered Charity Basic Information Sheet” as a document that needs to be included in the checklist of documents. Using the CHAMP system charities can update some of the information.
- In Schedule 2 and Schedule 4 they have switched the order of certain columns – so I guess you should actually read the form when filling it out – don’t just cut and paste from the previous year!
Some of the changes relating to political activities were announced earlier by CRA in PPDDA changes to T3010 reporting requirements.
By Mark Blumberg, Blumbergs
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