Cross Border Tax Consultants

  This is very common for the employers to avoid expenses by asking their employees to sign contracts as corporations in Canada. If you are an IT professional in Canada and your employer has asked you to incorporate a business and sign the contract, you must know the tax implications of these decisions. When a corporation has an incorporated-employee who performs services on its behalf, it is called Personal Services Business (PSB) as per Income Tax Act in Canada. First, see if your relationship is of employee or independent contactor with the business for whom you are providing these services. IF the relationship is of employment nature, your corporation will be a PSB. If the relationship is of independent contractor, you have an active business income. Now, determining whether the relationship is employee or contractor, is a fact based exercise. Simply signing a contract and saying it is a contractor is not enough. A brilliant article written by Maroof H. Sabri provides a basic...

    There are many ways small business owners can optimize their corporate income taxes for 2020. Check out here Source: https://www.maroofhs.com/post/2020-end-of-year-tax-planning-for-small-corporations-in-canada/

Property flipping is a business and taxed as a business income in Canada. Canada Revenue Agency is cracking down to ensure compliance.  Many factors decide whether you earned a capital gain from the sale of your house or it is a business. 1. What is the nature of the property? 2. How long you held the property? 3. How many real estate transactions you made? 4. How much effort did you put into renovating the property? 5. What were your original intentions when you purchased the property? 6. Under what circumstances you sold the property? A great post by a professional income tax accountant in Canada discusses the different income tax and excise tax issues related to flipping houses in Canada . In this comprehensive and easy to understand the post, Maroof Hussain Sabri, a CPA in Ontario discusses how case law provides the decisive factors to determine if the real estate transactions result in a business income or capital gain. Capital gains are included 50% only in the...

Investor pitch deck is a critical document used to pitch investors. Remember, you get only one chance to present your idea to investors so make sure you have prepared a killer pitch deck.   A typical pitch deck contains below slides: 1. Brief overview of the company: Start with presenting a brief overview of your company. 2. Mission and Vision of your Company: Carefully drafted mission and vision gives a quick insight into your company’s short term and long term goals and objectives. 3. The Problem: You must state a problem. Without presenting a problem you cannot pitch your idea. 4. The Solution: You must propose a solution to the aforementioned problem 5. Market Validation: Present that there is enough market where your proposed solution can work. Explain about the market opportunity. 6. Competition and differentiation: Present your existing and potential competitors and explain how your proposed solution offers a differentiation. Identify the key competitive advanta...

Canada needs immigrants! Immigration plays a critical role in the Canadian economy. That is why there are multiple immigration programs by different provinces and territories in Canada. Each of these programs have their own requirements based on their local needs. Almost always, business immigration to Canada needs a business concept and business plan. Some of the programs require you to submit business concept in the first stage and a business plan in the second stage. The province evaluates the business concept and business plan and assign a score based on the pre-established criteria. Such a criteria is already published by them. Therefore, it is critical that you read all those guidelines so that you can get the maximum score. A valuable post written by Maroof HS CPA Professional Corporation on how to write a killer business plan for immigration can be found here . They also provide a comprehensive business plan writing service for immigration to Canada. As explained by the pro...

Canada is a top immigration destination for people across the world; both from developing and developed countries. There are many positive sides to immigrating to Canada. One of the areas where all the new immigrants dread while coming to Canada is “Income Taxes”! Yes, individual income taxes or personal income taxes, are extremely high in Canada as compared to the neighbouring United States. This is even higher for those coming from the middle eastern countries with no income taxes at all. So if you are moving from a country where there are no income taxes such as the United Arab Emirates or other gulf countries, you must prepare yourself to start paying income taxes. You can take a couple of steps before immigrating to Canada such as: 1. Establish your date of change of residency. Tax residency and immigration residency are two different things. 2. Try to realize Capital gains before the date of immigration. If not, arrange for the fair market value of all of your assets as of...

 Not sure where to set up your research centre? Canada might be your go-to. For a while, Silicon Valley in the United States has been a Research and Development hub in the World. But, it may no more be the same. Bloomberg's September 2020 report emphasizes the problems with R&D incentives in the States and why businesses are moving their R&D centres to Canada. But why are foreign businesses setting up their R&D centres in Canada? Canada offers generous R&D Tax Incentives. As a young entrepreneur, setting up a business is no easy feat, but if it's in Canada, you're in for plenty of benefits. By international standards, Canada provides the most attractive R&D treatment. Though the U.S. is one of the top tech hubs since the tax systems are not so generous as that of Canada, there is a drastic shift and a new trend in the way businesses are setting up their R&D centres. Factors such as high business taxes, corporate culture, cost of living, and vari...