Canada

Four years later, an assessment from the CRA found Peter had owed nearly $150,000 in income tax when he died.

I’m a curious about how this happened and whether he knew about it.

That’s a lot of income tax owed, but the assessment was 4 years after he died, at which point the estates already been settled, so it seems like there really is no one that they can or should be going after. That’s not fair.

I do have a problem with going “here take my money, oh look I can’t pay that tax I owe now!”. That doesn’t seem like the case here.

I think it would be reasonable for the CRA to update their policy to do a special assessment on an accelerated timeline for this type of case, even if that affects how long executing the will and settling the estate takes.

In general the CRA is really annoying to deal with because tons of things don’t have clear or concrete definitions.