Tax Court of Canada (TCC)

The TCC is a national, bilingual, superior court of record, which has exclusive original jurisdiction to hear appeals and references pursuant to 14 federal statutes. Most of the appeals filed with the Court are on matters arising under: Income Tax Act, R.S.C., 1985, c. 1, Part IX of the Excise Tax Act, R.S.C., 1985, c. E-1 (GST/HST), Part IV of the Employment Insurance Act, S.C. 1996, c. 23, and Part I of the Canada Pension Plan, R.S.C., 1985, c. C-8. The constitution of the TCC is established by section 4 of the Tax Court of Canada Act, R.S.C., 1985, c. T-2. Further information on the TCC can be found at www.tcc-cci.gc.ca.

The table below provides an overview of the workload of the TCC.

Tax Court of Canada 2018–19 2017–18 2016–17 2015–16 2014–15
Proceedings Instituted or Filed 5,211 5,132 6,390 5,892 5,455
Court Judgments, Orders and Directions Processed by the Registry 13,759 12,968 14,482 12,618 12,751
Files prepared for hearing and heard in Court 888 774 887 914 1,128
Days in Court* 3,260 2,730 2,930 3,099 2,797
Recorded Entries 181,006 177,431 183,351 177,380 170,241
Total Dispositions 4,968 5,359 5,347 4,985 5,219
Active Proceedings as of March 31
Goods and Services Tax / Harmonized Sales Tax 1,390 1,529 1,592 1,417 1,248
Income Tax 8,680 8,431 8,586 7,722 6,804
Employment Insurance and Canada Pension Plan 347 378 336 293 462
Others 54 40 42 42 19
Total 10,471 10,378 10,556 9,474 8,533
Status as of March 31
Not perfected 1,086 1,003 1,271 1,207 1,485
Perfected 2,719 2,387 2,861 2,119 1,535
Reserved 143 81 88 132 125
Awaiting timetable 188 193 180 114 84
Scheduled for hearing 1,536 1,818 1,572 1,295 1,770
Specially Managed Cases 2,571 2,410 2,383 2,557 1,490
Awaiting another decision 2,228 2,486 2,201 2,050 2,044
Total 10,471 10,378 10,556 9,474 8,533
*For the TCC, “Days in Court” is defined as the number of court sitting days scheduled which include conference call days, courtroom scheduled sitting days and on duty judge days. Due to the manner data was captured in the Appeals System Plus (ASP), the numbers for “Days in Court” for the TCC that appeared in the CAS Annual Report in previous years were understated. Consequently, the statistics have been adjusted to reflect actual numbers of days in court scheduled and have been applied retroactively.