Imputing income

January 30, 2017

“Imputing income”, means a court finding that a spouse’s income is higher than it actually is, for the purposes of support (child and/or spousal). Whether the spouse is hiding income (doing “under the table” work which he/she is not reporting for tax purposes), or unreasonably deducting expenses from his/her income for tax purposes, a judge has the authority to find that one’s income is, for the purposes of calculating support, higher than what is being reported to CRA.
I had a case involving a wife who owned and operated a home daycare. She was seeking spousal support from the husband (my client), using her line 150 income on her tax return, as her total income for support purposes. After I extensively cross-examined the wife on her income and expenses (and reviewed all of the wife’s receipts, invoices and tax returns), the judge ultimately rejected her claim and found that her income was more than three times what she had reported to CRA. The link to the case can be found here.