Questions I get asked.

Are you a CPA?

I hold an Honours Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Ottawa and a Bachelor of Commerce from Carleton University, and I work in personal and corporate tax, bookkeeping and crypto reporting. If your situation needs a designated accountant for an assurance engagement, I will tell you and point you to one rather than take the work.

Where are you based, and do you work with clients outside Ottawa?

Ottawa. Clients across Canada are served remotely, with documents exchanged electronically and consultations by video or phone. Provincial rules differ, so what matters is where you resided on 31 December, not where I am.

What languages do you work in?

English, French and Arabic.

How does an engagement start?

A short conversation about what you actually need, then a quoted price before any work begins. You are not billed for the scoping call and you will not receive an invoice larger than the number you agreed to.

What do you need from me to start?

For a personal return: last year's return and notice of assessment, this year's slips, and details of anything unusual such as a property sale, self-employment or crypto activity. For a corporation: the financial statements and prior year T2. If something is missing I will tell you whether it matters.

I have not filed in several years. Will you take that on?

Yes, and it is more common than people assume. Where income was not reported, the Voluntary Disclosures Program can reduce penalties, but only if you come forward before the CRA contacts you about it. That timing is the single most important thing about a late filing, so the sooner you raise it the more options exist.

Do you give investment advice?

No. I am not a licensed investment advisor and I will not tell you what to buy. What I do is explain the tax consequence of what you are considering, which is a different and narrower question.

How current is the tax information on this site?

Every rate and threshold in the articles is checked against canada.ca before publication, and figures that change annually are linked to the CRA page carrying the current number rather than written into the text, so an article does not quietly go stale. Where the CRA has not published a position, the article says so instead of guessing.

What does a personal return actually include at $200?

Preparation and filing of your T1, including employment income, RRSP and TFSA activity, common credits and deductions, and a review of your notice of assessment when it arrives. Returns with rental property, self-employment, foreign reporting or crypto activity take longer and are quoted before any work begins. You are told the price before I start, not after.

Do you handle crypto?

Yes, and it is a significant part of the practice. Beyond the cost base work, the questions that come up most are mining and staking. The CRA's position is that mining at any real scale is usually a business, that rewards from staking on a centralised exchange are income when they are credited to your wallet on that platform, and that ASIC miners and GPU rigs can fall within capital cost allowance class 50. Those three answers change a return substantially.

What records do I need to keep for crypto?

The CRA's published list is specific: units and type of asset per transaction, the date and time, the Canadian dollar value at that moment, the other party even if all you have is their address, every wallet address used, and the opening balance with its cost and the closing balance for each asset each year. Keep it six years from the end of the last tax year it relates to, and export your exchange history regularly, because the exchange is not obliged to keep it for you.

What happens if the CRA writes to me?

First, read which programme it came from. A Pre-assessment or Processing Review or a Matching Program letter is a request for documents, not an audit, and it names a reference number and a date to respond by. I represent you for returns I prepared: I assemble the records, write the response and deal with the officer. If you arrive with a letter on a return someone else filed, that is quoted separately before I touch it.

I have not filed for several years. What are my options?

The Voluntary Disclosures Program, if you get there before the CRA opens an audit or investigation. Since 1 October 2025 it has had two tiers: an unprompted application normally receives 100% relief of the applicable penalties and 75% relief of the interest, while an application prompted by CRA contact normally receives up to 100% of the penalties and 25% of the interest. The filing must be at least one year past its due date, the application must be complete, and it has to include payment of the estimated tax or a request for a payment arrangement. Expect to assemble six years of Canadian records, ten if foreign income or assets are involved.

Can a return that was already filed be corrected?

Usually. Adjustments inside the normal three-year reassessment period are routine, and online change requests are quoted at around two weeks to process. The hard outer limit is worth knowing: a refund will not be issued on an adjustment request made more than ten calendar years after the end of that tax year. If you suspect a past return is wrong, the cost of waiting is real.

Do I have to pay instalments?

You may have to for 2026 if your net tax owing is more than $3,000, or more than $1,800 in Quebec, for 2026 and in either 2025 or 2024. The due dates are 15 March, 15 June, 15 September and 15 December. Missing one is not automatically expensive: the CRA applies the instalment penalty only where instalment interest for 2026 exceeds $1,000.

I hold property or accounts outside Canada. Does that change the return?

It may add Form T1135. It is required where the cost of your specified foreign property was more than $100,000 at any point in the year, and it is due with the return. The reason to take it seriously is the reassessment window: if foreign property income goes unreported and the T1135 was not filed on time, the CRA gets an additional three years to reassess that year. Tell me about the foreign holdings early, not in April.

Do I need to be in Ottawa?

No. The practice is Ottawa-based and serves clients across Canada remotely. Documents move electronically and consultations happen by video or phone. Provincial rules differ, so tell me where you resided on 31 December.

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What is included at $250 a month?

Monthly categorisation and reconciliation of your accounts, receipt matching, and a profit and loss and balance sheet you can actually read. GST/HST and payroll figures are reconciled as part of the close so the filings are transcription rather than reconstruction. Volume and complexity move the price, and it is quoted before work starts.

When do I have to register for GST/HST?

You stop being a small supplier once your worldwide taxable supplies pass $30,000. If you cross it inside a single calendar quarter, you have to charge tax on the very sale that took you over the line, and register within 29 days of that effective date. If you cross it across four consecutive quarters instead, you stop being a small supplier at the end of the month following that quarter. People usually discover this months late, having charged nothing, and the tax still has to come from somewhere.

I have not done books in a year. Is that a problem?

It is common and it is fixable. The first catch-up close takes longer than a routine month, sometimes a full day of work, and it is quoted separately. After that the monthly routine is one to two hours. One point worth knowing before you delay further: where a return is filed late, the six-year record retention clock runs from the date you actually file it, not from the year end, so the paperwork obligation stretches with the delay.

What does filing GST/HST late actually cost?

The late-filing penalty is calculated as A plus B times C, where A is 1% of the amount owing, B is 25% of A, and C is the number of complete months the return is overdue up to a maximum of 12. There is no late-filing penalty if you owe nothing or are owed a refund. Two flat penalties are easier to trip: $100 the first time you file on paper when you were required to file electronically and $250 for each one after that, and $250 for ignoring a demand to file.

Do you handle payroll?

Yes, including source deduction remittances and year-end T4s. A regular remitter, meaning an average monthly withholding under $25,000, remits by the 15th of the following month. A small employer with a clean compliance record may qualify to remit quarterly, on 15 April, 15 July, 15 October and 15 January, which is worth asking about because it frees up cash without changing anything you owe. T4 slips are due the last day of February, and a small employer filing 1 to 5 slips late faces a flat $100.

What happens if the CRA reviews my payroll or sales tax account?

That is a trust accounts examination, and it is narrower than a tax audit: it looks only at payroll and GST/HST. The CRA says the process generally runs about 60 days. It is triggered by patterns rather than bad luck, including late or missed remittances, late T4 or GST/HST filings, no response to a discrepancy notice, and a shareholder trying to recharacterise pay as dividends after the fact. Every one of those is a bookkeeping problem before it is a tax problem.

Which software do you work in?

Whatever you already use, provided it supports connected bank feeds and attaching receipts to transactions. If you are choosing, the requirements that matter are bank feeds, receipt capture, sales tax handling that understands Canadian GST/HST, an export you own, and a clear answer on where the data physically lives. I will not push you onto a product for the sake of it.

What do you actually need from me each month?

Read-only bank and credit card access or the statements, the receipts and supplier invoices, any payroll changes, and a note on anything unusual: an owner draw, a loan, an asset purchase, a personal expense that went through the business card. That last category is the largest source of year-end adjustments in owner-managed businesses, because to the software it looks like an ordinary transaction.

Will you tell me if something looks wrong?

That is most of the value. I would rather send you an uncomfortable note in month two than a large adjusting entry in month fourteen. If a number is going the wrong way, you will hear about it while there is still time to act on it.

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What does a $220 session actually produce?

Seventy-five minutes on one specific decision, and a written summary of what was decided and why. Typical subjects: whether to incorporate, how to pay yourself, whether a holding company is justified, or what a sale would look like after tax. You leave with a position, not a brochure.

Should I incorporate?

It depends on whether you can leave money in the company. On the rates the CRA publishes, a small business corporation pays 9% federally plus Ontario's 3.2% lower rate on active business income within the $500,000 business limit, against personal rates that climb well past that. But the advantage is a deferral, not a discount: if you draw every dollar out as salary in the same year, the two roads meet. Set against that is real annual cost, since a T2 is due six months after the year end and must be filed electronically, with a $1,000 penalty for filing it any other way.

Is a holding company worth it?

Sometimes, and the answer usually turns on two thresholds rather than on theory. Corporations that are associated share a single $500,000 business limit, so adding an entity can shrink the low-rate room rather than expand it. And once combined adjusted aggregate investment income across the group passes $50,000, the small business limit begins to grind, reaching nil above $150,000. I run both against your figures before anyone drafts anything.

Is this the same as tax preparation?

No. Preparation reports decisions you already made. Planning is the conversation before those decisions, while the year is still open and the options are still available. The two are complementary and priced separately.

When is planning worth paying for?

When a decision is large enough that being wrong costs more than the session. Incorporating, selling a business, buying or selling property, taking on a first employee, or a year where income will be unusually high or low. If the amount at stake is small, I will tell you so.

I am thinking about selling. When should we start?

Earlier than feels necessary. The lifetime capital gains exemption for 2025 sits at $1,250,000 on qualifying property, a maximum deduction of $625,000, and the general capital gains inclusion rate is one half after the government confirmed in March 2025 that it would not proceed with the proposed increase. Whether your shares qualify is not decided at closing: it is tested over a period beforehand, which means a company that does not qualify today may be able to, given lead time. A buyer arriving first removes most of that room.

Do you handle forecasting?

Yes. Cash flow projection, break-even analysis, and modelling what a change in pricing, headcount or financing does to the numbers. The point is to see the consequence before committing to it, and to know which assumption the answer is most sensitive to, because that is the one worth arguing about.

What do you need from me?

For most sessions: last year's return, current year figures to date, and a clear statement of the decision you are trying to make. If a corporation is involved, its financial statements and a list of any other corporations you or your family hold shares in, because association is decided by control rather than by intent. Incomplete information is workable; I will tell you what would sharpen the answer.

What if the answer is to do nothing?

Then that is the answer, and you get it in the first session rather than after an engagement. A structure that costs a few thousand a year in filings, bookkeeping and legal work to save less than that is a net loss dressed up as sophistication. I would rather lose the follow-on work than sell you one.

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