Services

Corporate & Personal Taxes

File on time, and accurately. For both personal and corporate tax: take advantage of deductions and write-offs you may not have known about. Protect yourself against audit by ensuring that you have back-up documentation for all your claims, while at the same time maximizing those claims. For corporate tax: understand the new Tax on Split Income (TOSI) rules that recently changed and significantly tightened. We will help you to decide whether you should pay yourself a salary or with dividends. Tax laws are changing all the time … what was relevant and possible last year may have changed the following year. Keeping up to date on changes in tax legislation may help you to decide when to make a capital purchase, and how to depreciate that purchase over time (just one example); or whether to purchase that piece of equipment outright, or to try to get a loan, or to perhaps lease it instead. All decisions have tax implications down the road.

Available Documents

• Personal intake form

Available in January, 2020:

• Corporate intake form

• Corporation documents we’ll need

• Document checklist for filing your T1 personal income tax return

• Document checklist for filing your T2 corporate income tax return

Accounting/Bookkeeping

When I started this business, I considered calling it Shoebox Accounting – again, because it was my desire to help people who felt overwhelmed. So many people are afraid to approach an accountant because they have stockpiled receipts (a wise thing to do, by the way, to keep absolutely EVERY receipt) in a shoebox, and perhaps they have a listing or copies of invoices, or an invoicing system, and that’s it. And so they don’t know where to begin. It begins with a phone call to us. We can handle shoeboxes. No problem. It does help if some organization of the contents has been done, but if you don’t have time, that’s what we’re here for. Many business owners make spreadsheets and totals, not knowing how to classify the amounts they are totalling. This can create more work in the long run.

Every client is different. Every business is different. Every client will want a slightly different level of bookkeeping involvement. We can accommodate the entire spectrum and will work with you until you are comfortable with your level of involvement.

But accounting is, of course, much more than bookkeeping, and yet the two go hand-in-hand and so an understanding of accounting is useful for getting the bookkeeping right. We can do that for you, or we can guide you to make things as pain-free as possible at year-end.

Start-up Consulting

Have an idea for a business and not sure how to begin to set it up? Or maybe you are a sole proprietor interested in incorporating and wondering whether you should do that. How do you set up payroll? What about a budget and business plan going forward? Do you even need a business plan? Planning on taking on a partner? Someone interested in investing in your business?

So many questions. Let us help you get started on the right foot. There are a lot of common mistakes we can help you avoid, mistakes that may cost you money or give you headaches down the road. Maybe you are a non-profit or wish to apply for charitable organization status: in either case you would structure your Chart of Accounts much differently than if you were an appliance repairperson or retail storeowner.

What should your year-end be? How often do you want to be remitting your GST? Your payroll source deductions? What bank accounts and credit cards do you want to set up?

Should you use a service such as Quickbooks or Xero? Or maybe a business-specific invoicing/bookkeeping service? Do you need a scheduling service? What about point of sale? These are all questions to which you will need answers before you really get going. Let us help to take the mystery and stress out of start-up.

Payroll & GST

Payroll: It is not necessary to be incorporated to have employees, but the rules governing those employees is the same. First of all, congratulations that you are not doing all the work yourself! Now, how do you manage payroll? Do you know how much you should hold back from your employees each pay period? Did you know that Revenue Canada is particularly touchy about late remittances? Be careful about designating a worker a self-employed contractor vs. an employee. Most people don’t realize that this isn’t up to the business owner, rather it is a Revenue Canada decision. Accurate and timely filing of T4s and ROEs is extremely important. Let us help you minimize the chances of problems down the road.

GST: Should you open a GST account? Do you know how the timing of the $30,000 threshold is calculated? Do you know how you can get part of the GST back on items purchased even BEFORE you opened a GST account?

Get the GST refunds you are owed, calculate your GST owing accurately (and don’t pay more than you have to), stay on time with your reporting and ensure that old accounts don’t languish or you may be notionally assessed.

Available in January, 2020:

• New employee forms

• New employee information

No-Charge Extras

Bow River Business Services offers you the following at no extra cost to you:

• A secure Portal that works like a private courier delivery system. You will be assigned a portal to your name to which you can upload sensitive and private documents; I then download the documents at my end. It works in reverse as well. This is much safer than attaching documents to an email.

• 24/7 access to the Canada Income Tax Act and new legislation reports. You might have the most difficult tax question to ask … I can research it and try to get an answer for you. This may save you hours on hold with Revenue Canada (and having to listen to their terrible hold music!).

• DocuSign: a service that will save time and money. Revenue Canada recently allowed for certain documents to be signed electronically, thereby improving the efficiency with which work can get done. No need for fancy scanners or printers; DocuSign will be accepted by Revenue Canada as though it was an inked in-person signature, all done through the secure Portal.

Reporting & Remittance

• T4s and T4 summaries for all employees

• Information returns – T5s (dividend reporting) for corporations

• Submit documents to Revenue Canada online as required for review or audit

• ROEs for employees no longer in your employ

• T5018s (required for some construction company labour)

• GST reporting and remitting of payments due

• Payroll remittances

• Personal and Corporate income tax amounts owing remitted

• Instalment payment remittances