Category: Canada

Fact checking on charities

In Canada, charities that are registered with the federal government enjoy certain benefits that other non-profit organizations do not. In exchange for being compliant with multiple government regulations, they have the ability of issuing tax receipts which equates to a refund of income taxes of 20.06% for the first $200 donated, and 43.7% for anything above that, using BC rates.

One of the items that a registered charity has to comply with is reporting to the Canada Revenue Agency so there is a degree of transparency where people can see where money is raised and spent within a charity. You can access this on the CRA Charities Listings site.

It is very important to know when an executive of a registered charity says that “We do not receive any government funding” that you check lines 4540 to 4560 on the return; if you see revenues there, the management is lying to the public. In addition, they are implicitly receiving government funding due to the value of the tax refund from charitable contributions. For example, if you were to donate $1,000 to a charity, your after-tax cost is actually $610.28. The federal and provincial government are essentially donating the other $389.72 in the form of an income tax refund.

Also there is the well-known issue of having a high percentage of money wasted on administration expenses. If line 5010 (Management and Administration component of total expenditures) and 5020 (Money spent to raise more money) are high compared to total expenditures in a charity, I would look at it as probable that they are not being efficiently run.

My advice would be to donate only to registered charities that you know at least one of the directors of, and your opinion of the director is positive. At least if they incompetently squander your money, you’ll be able to grill them in person and keep them accountable.

Canadian government firing a warning shot on real estate

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty made a statement on December 18, 2009 regarding maximum amortization periods and down payment rates. While I don’t have a copy of the statement or speech made, the National Post has a fairly good summary.

The salient detail is that the finance ministry might change the guidelines and decrease the maximum amortization period of a mortgage (currently 35 years), and increase the minimum downpayment (currently 5%). It would be likely that 30 year mortgages with 10% down payments will be the new rule.

The federal government is probably realizing that the CMHC has guaranteed a ton of debt and in the event of a Canadian real estate meltdown that it would have to pay a very heavy bill as people begin to default on underwater mortgages – this would occur when incomes do not rise to match rising interest rates. Most of the Canadian banks would get away with the financial damage, while CMHC would be paying the bill.

CMHC does collect a one-time insurance premium, according to this schedule:

Loan-to-Value Premium on Total Loan Premium on Increase to Loan Amount for Portability and Refinance
Standard Premium Self-Employed without third Party Income Validation Standard Premium Self-Employed without third Party Income Validation
Up to and including 65% 0.50% 0.80% 0.50% 1.50%
Up to and including 75% 0.65% 1.00% 2.25% 2.60%
Up to and including 80% 1.00% 1.64% 2.75% 3.85%
Up to and including 85% 1.75% 2.90% 3.50% 5.50%
Up to and including 90% 2.00% 4.75% 4.25% 7.00%
Up to and including 95% 2.75% 6.00% 4.25%* *
90.01% to 95% —
Non-Traditional Down Payment		 2.90% N/A * N/A
Extended Amortization Surcharges
Greater than 25 years, up to and including 30 years: 0.20%
Greater than 30 years, up to and including 35 years: 0.40%

So let’s pretend you buy some Yaletown condominium for $400,000 and decide to pay 5% down and a 35-year amortization.  Your insurance premium, with a verifiable income, is 3.15%, or about $12,000 for the right to have your bank protected in the event of you defaulting on the $380,000 mortgage.

If the rules change to 10% down and 30-year amortization, the CMHC premium goes down to 2.2%, or about $7,900 on a $360,000 mortgage.  Strictly looking at the premiums, it would suggest that changing to a 10%/30-year system would reduce defaults by 30%.

The problem deals with correlation – if one mortgage defaults, it is more likely that others will in a cascading line (mainly because CMHC will have to sell the property in order to recover as much of the defaulted loan as possible, depressing the market, and likely causing other strategic defaults).  It doesn’t matter what caused the default, but my prime hypothesis is when people go and get their 2% floating rate mortgages, when the Bank of Canada starts to raise rates in the middle of 2010, people will be facing double interest payments when they haven’t properly budgeted for it.

There is also the batch of people that got low 5-year fixed rate mortgages facing renewal – right now 5-year fixed rates are still at relatively low rates (3.8%) but the party will end.

The finance ministry is just trying to make sure the party ends slowly (by people paying off their high-leverage loans over a long period of time), instead of the cops coming in and storming the house (if people can’t pay the interest on their high-leverage loans and cause a cascading default).  Jim Flaherty probably knows this is a financial time bomb that can potentially go off if the wrong circumstances hits the economy, and is taking preventative medicine to do so.

CMHC mortgage bonds currently trade like fixed income government securities.  You can see a chart of mortgage bonds outstanding on this chart.

Canadian tax rules about year-end selling – Trade date vs. Settlement Date

(Update on the text below: IT-133 has been removed from the CRA’s website. Please read the December 31, 2012 article for further information.)

When you purchase or sell shares on a stock exchange, the current date is called the trade date. However, the actual transaction (the exchange of shares and cash) is processed in three business days, which is known as the settlement date. So for example, if you bought shares of something on Tuesday, December 8, the transaction is settled on Friday, December 11.

Computer networks and electronic processing of share transfers have made the three day requirement antiquated, but nobody has bothered to amend the rules.

One practical consequence of the three day settlement rule is determining which year a transaction was processed with respect to capital gains taxes. Take the practical example of selling shares for a $100 capital loss on December 30, 2009, with a settlement date of January 5, 2010. Do you report your $100 capital loss in your 2009 or 2010 tax filing?

The answer is 2010. Most financial publications out there correctly advise people that they have to dispose of their shares by December 24, 2009 in order to be able to book a capital loss (or gain) in the 2009 year. The trade will settle on December 31, 2009. A trade made on December 28, 2009 will settle on January 4, 2010. The reason is because both Christmas Day and Boxing Day are considered to be non-business days in Canada.

Most financial publications do not quote the source of the rules which governs this issue, mainly CRA Interpretation Bulletin IT-133. The rules using the settlement date was codified in this bulletin in 1973, which has survived to this very day.

As a final note, the USA uses a different system. For people filing with the IRS, they consider the trade date to be the year of disposition. The USA exchanges do not use Boxing Day as a non-business day, so trades performed on December 28, 2009 will settle on December 31, 2009.

Bank of Canada getting nervous about debt levels

The Governor of the Bank of Canada in a recent speech is saying that while the economy appears to be recovering, that household debt levels are of a concern. Most consumer debt expense is through a mortgage.

In particular, the following paragraph is worthy of mention:

The simulation generates a scenario indicating that, by the middle of 2012, almost one in ten (9.6 per cent) Canadian households would have a debt-service ratio greater than 40 per cent, the threshold above which households are considered financially vulnerable (Table 2). Moreover, the percentage of debt owed by these vulnerable households would almost double. Both of these metrics are well above their recent peaks.

It is worthy to note that “Scenario 1” and “Scenario 2” of the Bank of Canada have short term interest rates at 1.5% at the end of 2010, and 3.1% at the end of 2011 (in Scenario 1) and 4.00% at the end of 2011 (in Scenario 2). These are hypothetical scenarios, but it does not appear that the Bank of Canada will be keeping rates at 0.25% past their June 2010 declaration.

A debt service ratio is generally considered to be debt interest expense divided by pre-tax income. Depending on what type of statistics one prefers to look at, household income in Canada averages roughly $86,000 for a married couple, or roughly $36,000 for an “unattached individual”. In the case of an individual, a debt coverage ratio of 40% is paying approximately $14,400 a year in interest payments, or about 1,200 a month.

Right this second, the best market rate you can get on a variable rate mortgage is prime minus 0.25%. Prime currently is 2.25%. So if you have your average unattached individual buy a condominium for $300,000, they will be paying about $6,000/year in interest payments. However, if the bank rate goes up 2.85% as it will in “Scenario 1”, suddenly that $6,000 interest payment will be going to $15,300 a year. On a $36,000 pre-tax income (or about $29,300 take-home given BC 2010 tax rates), this is a huge amount of debt service, just over half. If you use a $50,000 pre-tax income, your net take-home goes to $38,900 and interest represents 39% of after-tax income.

Harvest Energy Trust takeover by KNOC approved

The takeover of Harvest Energy Trust, for $10/unit and acquisition of debt by the Korean National Oil Company (KNOC), has been approved by Harvest Energy unitholders. The vote was 90.2% in favour. They required 66.7% for approval.

One particular note of amusement is the Harvest Energy Yahoo message board that was dominated by trolls were screaming about voting against the merger. If you believed that the message board was a representative sample of the unitholders, you would have received the impression that the takeover vote would have failed 90% against, instead of in favour! Message boards for most companies are worse than useless – the information that travels through them should be regarded with the same credibility of that of supermarket tabloids.

Retail investors generally do not matter in terms of corporate governance – it is the institutional investors, primarily mutual, pension and hedge fund owners that control most of the votes in publicly held corporations. The market had priced in Harvest units as if the takeover vote was a done deal, and indeed, the market was correct on this projection.

Once the takeover is finally cleared, with an expected date of December 22, 2009, Harvest will be delisted. My guess why they do this at the end of the year, opposed to the beginning of January is because so many people have accrued losses on Harvest Units that management decided it was worth crystallizing the capital losses for the 2009 tax filing, rather than deferring capital gains for 2010.

Within 30 days of the takeover, KNOC is obligated to make an offer to the debenture holders for the cash repurchase of debt at 101% of par value; I will be tendering my debt (or selling it on the open market above 101%, whatever the case may be) simply because of uncertainty of being able to be paid out. While I have glossed over KNOC’s financials, and believe them to be a very solvent and viable corporate entity, the information I have on them is not timely, they do not report to SEC or SEDAR, and I don’t want to have to deal with a Dubai-like situation where Harvest Energy defaults on its debentures, and KNOC will not guarantee the debt.

I am quite happy to tender the debt in 2010 as this way I can defer capital gains until I file my taxes in April 2011.