Canadian Budget 2010 announces disbursement quota reform for Canadian charities

The Canadian federal government announced disbursement quota reform in the 2010 Budget to remove the 80/20 expenditure requirement for registered Canadian charities.  For many charities this will have no real impact - they were handily satisfying their disbursement quota requirements and for those that were not (except in extreme cases) CRA was not using the DQ to revoke charitable status.  As one observer noted on the changes “No more 80/20 ordinary gift. No more enduring property, including 10 year gifts. No more specified gifts. No more intercharity transfer rules based on original DQ designation. Just a simple obligation to use the equivalent of 3.5% based on previous 24 month market average for charitable purposes. ... The 3.5% obligation doesn’t kick in for charitable organizations until there is $100k in assets, while for foundations it stays at $25k.”  We will probably have a revised T3010 at some point to reflect these changes and one can expect with the simpler formula that in the future CRA will more vigorously enforce the DQ provisions as this will be easier to understand.  There is no cost associated with this change and a number of other proposals to increase tax incentives from some organizations were not included in the budget, which makes sense in light of the difficult fiscal situation in addition to other reasons.