Our tax planning process is rigorous and designed to discover any potential efficiencies that are available. Over the years, we have identified tens of thousands of dollars of potential savings for many different companies. While we can’t guarantee the same will be true for your business, we take pride in finding every opportunity possible for savings.

Here are some common mistakes we see in corporate tax planning we can help resolve:

1. Zero Consideration of Salary Payments vs. Dividend Payments

• Dividends don’t include many important benefits (i.e. CPP, RRSP’s).  
• The rules for how much you can pay to a spouse are very different depending on if you’re paying salaries or dividends. Incorrectly paying a spouse can have serious tax implications.   
• Many people incorrectly equate CPP with taxation—CPP is not tax, it’s a forced savings plan.  
• Payroll requires regular remittances to be sent to the CRA, but this can easily be automated through your bank.  

2. Accumulating Cash/Investments in Operating Companies

• Accumulating large cash/investment balances (including real estate) inside of a company that has active operations puts all of your hard-earned money at risk.  
• Your assets need to be protected (via a holding company) so that an issue in your operating company doesn’t result in you losing everything you’ve ever earned. 

3. Missing Deductions

• Some of the common ones are: office–in–home deductions, RRSP deductions (i.e. not contributing to RRSP’s when it’s possible), childcare, medical expenses, and work–related training.

4. Improper Income Splitting

• Taxation in Canada greatly accelerates once you earn over $100,000 per year. Plus, the rates change every year so we update our tables annually. Check out the link on our Resource page or call us to learn more about tax rates and how they affect your business!  
• The highest rate of tax is roughly 50% of the income earned—it’s almost pointless to earn money if you only get to keep half!  
• Structuring your affairs so that income is evenly distributed between spouses is critically important. Having one spouse earn a large income while the other spouse earns a small one results in tens of thousands of dollars going to the CRA every year that could actually be retained.  

Navigate CPA  Team regularly write Articles on tax planning concepts that break down all of this as well.