Churches and registered charitable Christian organizations.
To the treasurer and members of the board of directors

The Quebec Council of Christian Charities has been defending, for the last few years, the interests of churches and Christian charities in Quebec, in regard to the application of federal and provincial laws, as well as to their relation with other legal and political bodies.

This letter wishes to bring to your attention two important decisions made by the Ministère du revenu du Québec (MRQ) following the interventions of the Quebec Council of Christian Charities. We strongly suggest that you take a moment to read this document since it may concern your church or your charitable organization.

Registration of charitable organizations

Originally, we estimated that between 1% and 3% of churches and Christian charities were not registered with the provincial government, although correctly registered with the federal government. However, in our dealings with several churches, we discovered that between 10% and 15% of churches were unregistered with the MRQ. They emit charitable receipts for income tax purposes in Quebec without the authorization of the MRQ. This puts these churches and other charities, as well as their administrators, in a position of illegality and vulnerability.

Certain churches and organizations expressed to us their desire to correct their situation with the MRQ, but fear nonetheless the consequences of having issued illegality tax receipts for several years.

Desiring to clarify this situation ; we negociated with the MRQ an agreement by which it will be possible for these churches and charities to correct their situation by filing the agreed documents. Registration will then be automatic and without any danger of reprisals. Since the MRQ will proceed to a major reorganization of its charities department as of April 2004 ; we believe that we must seize this opportunity to correct any registration irregularities.

The Quebec Council of Christian Charities can assist you* in verifying if your charity is correctly registered with the MRQ and help you take the necessary steps to produce the documents agreed with the MRQ. Take note that producing the annual TP985.22 report does not mean that you are registered with the MRQ for tax receipt purposes. Let us benefit from this opening while it is being offered to us.

Registered charity information return (T3010A & TP985.22)

A few months ago, The Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) simplified the annual information return by eliminating the complex calculations of the disbursement quota. Through these and other changes, the T3010A was reduced from 13 pages to 4 pages.

When we took knowledge of the fact that the Ministère du Revenu du Québec (MRQ) had no short term intention to harmonize its TP985.22 with that of CRA, we took appropriate action and met with the provincial authorities. Following these measures, the MRQ has advised us that they had received favourably our request and that the complex calculations of the disbursement quota would no longer be required as long as a copy of the CRA disbursement quota was mailed to them upon receipt.

For more information, please consult the news about the two subjects mentioned above:

• Harmonization of the TP985.22 with the T3010A
• Charities who have forgot to do their Provincial registration: Temporary agreement with Revenu Québec

Hoping that this information will be useful to you.

Please acknowledge, dear brothers and sisters, our love in Jesus-Christ.

The team at QCCC