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Greenberg|Turner, a Human Resources Law Firm™, is recognized as a leading firm in the area of corporate immigration law which manages and directs the international movement of key international employees on an outsourced basis. The firm’s clients include Fortune 500/TSE corporations in the financial and banking sectors, consulting services, software and hardware leaders and communications. We are recruiting for two lawyers to join our Canadian and Global Teams. The successful candidate will: • demonstrate complex problem solving capabilities and superior communication skills; • offer excellent initiative and co-ordination attributes; • be comfortable working in a fast-paced and challenging environment; and • have an aptitude to learn and use proprietary software technology. Corporate immigration experience is required. Language capabilities in French and/or Portuguese are an asset. If you are interested in becoming part of the our team, please forward your resume to: careers@gt-hrlaw.com
401 Bay Street | Suite 3000 | Toronto | Canada M5H 2Y4
Tel: 416 943 0288 | Fax: 416 943 0289 | www.greenbergturner.ca
Harris + Harris LLP is a highly respected, dynamic small-sized business law firm in the Greater
Toronto Area. Besides our business law focus, we have lawyers who have expertise in other areas of
law including Securities, Commercial Litigation, Estates, Construction Lien and Tax.
We believe there is an excellent opportunity for an experienced real estate lawyer, with either
a partial or established practice and with a proven background in Commercial Real Estate
and Secured Loan Transactions, to grow their practice along with ours. You can be assured of
referrals from our large and sophisticated client base. We can also offer you use of our first-rate
premises and accounting staff. Finally, our substantial investment in our information technology infrastructure will undoubtedly benefit your practice.
If you are looking for a new and exciting opportunity and would like to work along side experienced lawyers in a collegial atmosphere please submit your resume to:
Harris + Harris LLP
2355 Skymark Avenue, Suite 300
Mississauga, Ontario, L4W 4Y6
Attention: Mr. Mark L. Swartz
Telephone: 905-629-7800 Facsimile: 905-629-4350
markswartz@harrisandharris.com www.harrisandharris.com
pain for real estate lawyers
HST
Continued From Page 20
Revenue Agency and apply for a refund of
HST, due to an amount paid in error,” using
Form GST189 General Application for Rebate
of GST/HST.
He says that in so doing, realtors are leav-
ing consumers unrepresented since real estate
lawyers are not going to argue a case before
the CRA as part of their fee to close a deal.
“What OREA is counseling its members
to do is have them tell vendors that ‘it’s your
fight, not our fight,’ and I don’t think that’s
fair.”
It’s also not necessary, since both OREA
and the Supreme Court of Canada have
already provided clarity on commissions,
argues Silverstein. He points out that listing
agreements state that sellers are only obli-
gated to pay the commission after a success-
ful closing.
Then there’s the Supreme Court case,
H.W. Liebig & Company v. Leading Investments [1986] 1 S.C.R. 70, which referred to
the British Court of Appeal decision, Jaques
v. Lloyd D. George & Partners Ltd. [1968] 1
W.L.R. 625.
In the latter case, the esteemed jurist, Lord
Denning, wrote in the reasons for the judg-
ment that “when an estate agent [realtor] is
employed to find a purchaser a house, the
ordinary understanding of mankind is that
the commission is payable out of the purchase
price when the matter is concluded.”
Silverstein says that the federal, Ontario
and B.C. governments could have prevented
some of the confusion by instituting a
90-day transition period in which any deals
signed up to June 30 and closed before Sept.
30 would have been subject to only GST on
commissions.
Instead, purchasers and vendors have been
saddled with paying HST on them as well as
for land surveys, appraisals and, of course,
legal fees and disbursements, all of which is
adding several thousand dollars to the costs of
buying or selling homes, says Ray Mikkola, a
partner at the Mississauga, Ont.-based firm,
Pallett Valo LLP, where he also heads the commercial real estate law group.
“Many real estate lawyers cannot afford to
pass on eight-per-cent more cost to their cli-
ents, so it may put downward pressure on the
hourly rate lawyers can charge.”
He points out that in huge swaths of
Ontario, real estate practitioners are already
working on fixed-fee arrangements rather
than charging by the hour.
“I worry that if residential practitioners in
small towns are not able to pass on the HST to
their clients, it will further cause them to
assess the profitability of their practice, which
in some cases, is already at the margin,” says
Mikkola, past chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s (CBA’s) national real property section
and member of the executive of the Ontario
Bar Association’s real property section.
“It may cause lawyers to stop doing resi-
dential real estate or may actually shut their
practices down since those in small commun-
ities use the monies they get from residential
real estate to pay their staff salaries and rent.”
He says that if those lawyers leave those
communities, they also take with them their
expertise in other areas of law, such as family
and criminal, which they often provide as gen-
eral practitioners in less-populated centres
with few if any other lawyers.
