Should I do dividends or Salaries as an Owner of my Company. I often get the question of “should I do dividends or salaries” and I strongly believe that salaries are better than dividends, which is contrary to what everyone else says. When I advise clients that they should do salaries they will often ignore my advise on the matter and go with dividends regardless. Today’s posting I will address every argument ever conceived for the “dividend” camp and debunk the myths. Then through a combination of addressing these arguments and providing you with the advantages of doing salaries I hope to be able to convince you that salaries are…

  Dear Finance Minister Morneau, The general discussion thus far has been the impact on small businesses and retired professionals with corporate funds. In an effort to change many of my clients’ tax planning on how to deal with these proposed changes I had encountered what I believe to be an unintended consequence that will affect capital markets in Canada. Is it really 73% taxes on portfolios First lets discuss the proposed mechanism in how the 73% tax on corporate stock portfolios is supposed to work. Currently the tax rate on passive investments is approximately 48% inside corporations if we include the 38% Part IV refundable tax. This amount is…

            It’s your company’s year end, you’ve submitted everything to the accountant and they’ve done all the work to prepare your financial statements and tax returns for the year. You sit down for a meeting and they’ve run through the numbers with you, sometimes they give you some small advice and sometimes they give you tax suggestions but you really don’t know what you should be asking them at this meeting. This sit down meeting should be one of the most productive tools you as a client have with your accountant. I’m an accountant operating out of Calgary and here are some questions to ask…