Paul Carenza

About Paul Carenza

When a deal has tax consequences, Paul Carenza is the partner at Gowling WLG in Toronto who works through them. Most of the practice is income tax advice on acquisitions, reorganizations and financings, whether the parties are all in Canada or the transaction crosses a border. Clients come from both the private and public sectors, at home and abroad. Executive compensation is a second focus, from designing a compensation plan to sorting out the tax side of sending people on cross-border assignments, and Carenza also represents clients who end up in disputes with tax authorities.

There's a distinct energy thread too. Carenza advises Ontario energy sector clients on payments in lieu of taxes and related questions, and utilities feature in the deal record: the work includes acting for PowerStream and its municipal shareholders (Vaughan, Markham and Barrie) in the merger with Enersource and Horizon Utilities that created Alectra, then for Alectra when its distribution utility merged with Guelph Hydro's. Chambers Canada ranks Carenza in Tax nationwide and recommends the transactional work, M&A included, noting that utility companies are among the clients.

Called to the Ontario bar in 1997, Carenza held partner positions at Ogilvy Renault and Lang Michener, then spent four years as a tax partner at Cassels Brock & Blackwell. The move to Gowlings' Toronto office came in January 2015, and Carenza has since led the firm-wide Tax Group and remains a member of it. Carenza holds a civil law LLB from Université Laval and a common law LLB from Western, and is fluent in English and French.

Carenza writes and speaks regularly, and sits on panels at conferences. Carenza is editor-in-chief of Thomson Reuters' Taxation of Executive Compensation and Retirement journal and co-edits Gowling WLG's Canadian Tax newsletter. Articles have run in the Canadian Tax Journal and Canadian Tax Highlights, and Carenza has presented at the Canadian Tax Foundation's Ontario Tax Conference and an Ontario Bar Association employment law program.