The self-employed, small and incorporated businesses are by far the category of clients that can benefit the most from using professional tax and accounting services.

Top Ten Preparation Tips for the self-employed and businesses:

1- Make sure your Trial Balance, Income Statement, Balance Sheet and all your annual transactions are well prepared and in balance. Paying close attention to identifying asset versus operating expenses.

2- Properly report all your HST charges and ITC transactions for your HST reporting period.

3- Self-employed individuals and smaller business will usually use pre-developed Excel templates (usually available upon request) to do their reporting and medium size operations will use software such as Sage 50, QuickBooks, etc….

4- It is most important that you include all your expenses. For example, a misplaced $1,000 dollar invoice can represent up to $490 in your pocket! and that is excluding the 13% refundable HST.

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As you may already be aware, the Canadian federal government has announced several new initiatives and tax breaks for familys in October 2014 budget update.

Before I start enumerating some of these announcements, there is a need to inform some families to proceed with a degree of cautiousness and awareness in regards to the new tax savings. Families with children under 18 years of age will definitely be receiving a lot more fund during and throughout the year. That being said, please be advised to spend it with a degree of caution as these UCCB payments are taxable benefits. Not to mention that, in addition to the fact that the government has also decided to abolish the Child Tax Credit, you could consequently be left with higher tax bill come tax time at the end of the year, if your payroll deductions have not been adjusted accordingly, given that all other factors remain the same.

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It’s important to make sure you have someone you can trust, who is truly committed, dedicated and attentive?

Finding a Good Accountant:

It is not wise to judge your accountant’s tax preparation services by their appearances. The mere fact that you are receiving a refund, or even by the size of the refund is not indicative of the quality of his/her services. An accountant who reduces your taxes payable from $15K to $10, is just as competent, if not more, than one who increase your refund from $2K to $3K.

We all know that clients basically have to trust their accountant to be diligent and do what needs to be done properly.  If they could review all his/her work, they would not be using his/her services in the first place anyways, right?  While no one is perfect, how can you evaluate if he/she is ethical, dedicated and will to exercise these important characteristics?
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If I wasn’t an experienced accountant myself, there’s probably a good chance I would not be recommending one either!

(Yes, you read correctly.)

Watch video (in french)

Hiring a Professional CPA Accountant:

Interestingly enough, even the most financially inexperienced individuals are hesitant about spending their money on intangible services such as these. In general, if someone thinks (wrongly so or not) that they can possibly do it themselves, then they would rather try and not have to spend the money for tax services.

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