FCA Confirms Minister's Permissible Alternative Arguments Under S. 152(9)

In TPine,¹ the Federal Court of Appeal (the "FCA") considered the Minister of National Revenue's (the "Minister") power to raise new arguments at "any time" after the expiration of the normal reassessment period. This is the first appellate-level decision to consider subsection 152(9) of the Income Tax Act (Canada) (the "Act") since it was amended in 2016. The FCA provided a helpful review of its prior jurisprudence and concluded that the 2016 amendment did not impose new restrictions on the Minister's ability to raise new or alternative arguments. For this reason, jurisprudence from before the 2016 amendment remains available to support the Minister's ability to raise new or alternative arguments. However, it is unclear how courts might allow the Minister to raise alternative arguments that "the income to which an [assessed] amount relates was from a different source".²