About

A reference database of CRA and Ontario accounting rules, kept by Back Office Stars. The method is published here because a reference you cannot audit is a reference you cannot trust.

How a rule gets here

Each rule is one file. It carries the rule as verbatim prose, the sources it rests on, the date a person last checked it against those sources, and a flag saying how far it can be trusted. The files are the database — there is no server and no hidden state, so every change to every rule is visible in the project's history.

How it stays right

Every URL the database cites is fetched weekly and compared against the copy held from the week before. Changes are classified; anything that cannot be confidently interpreted flips the affected rule to Under review rather than being guessed at. Every change, human or automated, gets a row in the changelog. Nothing is edited silently.

Three rules we hold ourselves to

• A consolidation date is not an effective date. When legislation is consolidated, the date recorded is when the text was compiled — not when the rule began to apply. Every effective date here names its own authority: a budget, a bill, a royal assent date, or a CRA notice. Reading a date off a consolidation timeline once gave us an answer that was wrong by three years.
• Figures flow one way. Rates live in one place. A rate quoted inside a mirrored CRA document is never treated as current, because many of those documents carry rate boxes that are years out of date.
• Uncertainty is stated, not smoothed over. Hence the gaps page, and the flags.

Crown copyright

Material published by the Canada Revenue Agency and the Government of Ontario is reproduced here under the Government of Canada's terms for reproduction, without alteration to its meaning, with attribution on every page, and with a canonical link pointing at the original. This reproduction is not produced in affiliation with, or with the endorsement of, either government.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, tell us — the changelog will record the correction and who prompted it.