Can a payor impute income for employment in the form of shares or stock options?

Remuneration for employment in the form of shares or stock options may also result in income being imputed to a parent. For example, in the recent case of Matwichuk v. Stephenson, 2007 BCSC 238, income was imputed to the husband where he received a significant portion of his remuneration in the form of stock or stock options, which were not reflected on his T4. That case also involved a payor who was involved in complex stock and stock option transactions involving a multiplicity of mining companies, for which he did consulting work. He was associated with some of these companies in a fiduciary capacity as an officer and/or director, which complicated his ability to hold and sell stocks freely. Madam Justice Garson concluded that there was an evidentiary onus on the husband to respond to the wife’s evidence of publicly available information about his remuneration received from the various companies. Although income was imputed pursuant to paragraph 19(1)(f) of the Guidelines for the husband’s failure to disclose his interests in all of the companies he was associated with, the basis of imputing that income was that he had received remuneration in the form of stock and stock options that exceeded his T4 income.