Category Archive

The landscape for businesses of all types has rapidly shifted in our digital age and more and more of our financial transactions are occurring online. As a business, it’s essential for you to safeguard your data – as well as your customers’ – when you’re transacting online. In this age, you have to be operating on the digital playing field, … Read More

Owning a business involves confronting a never-ending conundrum – should I hire someone else to do it, or should I do it myself? Broken down further, the decision is between the cost of spending your own time to complete an activity and the money lost performing an activity outside of your area of expertise, or the money gained by having … Read More

Running a small business can be incredibly rewarding, but it’s certainly not easy work. One major change from being employed by a business to running your own is how you have to report your taxes. Small business owners are more likely to be audited by the CRA than folks who are employed by a business and there are several common … Read More

We are all, in part, the products of our environments. Imagine going into a workplace where no one ever takes responsibility for their actions, everyone is always trying to shift the blame, and dishonesty is rampant. Not only would you have a toxic experience, you’d likely begin exhibiting the same behaviours as everyone else – if not, you’d be held … Read More

The following is a brief guide for employers so you can better understand your payroll obligations Although payroll obligations are fairly complex and nuanced, we’ll break down these obligations into three sections: payroll obligations, CPP obligations, and EI obligations.   Payroll Obligations   First, determine whether or not you are considered an employer. Are you paying salaries and vacation pay? … Read More

  We’re going to talk about how to minimize your income tax owed when you’re a business professional but talking about such a broad topic requires a brief caveat. The advice that we’re going to give here is general – there are deductions a dentist might be able to take that a general contractor could not, just as there are … Read More

One of the key challenges facing any government is to try to find efficiencies without disrupting markets. This is arguably the best way of “making money out of nothing”; without having to create new revenue streams or increase taxes, when the government can decrease bureaucracy without sacrificing services, there are net savings. That’s one of the goals behind HST, the … Read More

There’s a lot of advantages to dividing power between governments; it allows individual regions to cater more carefully to the needs of their population. The disadvantage to multiple parties splitting power, however, is inconsistency. Look at the conflict between Alberta and British Columbia over pipelines, for an example of how provincial powers, both under a greater federal power, can lead … Read More

I’m going to level with you right off the bat – you can’t actually lower the property tax rate unless you get elected to the municipal council with enough like minded citizens. That means the efforts we’re going to describe in this post all relate to how much property tax you’ll end up paying – not the rate at which you … Read More

Paying taxes is an important part of creating a vibrant, sustainable place to live. Our taxes contribute to infrastructure, social programs, incentives for new business owners, and more. That all said, the fewer taxes a person has to pay, the more money they have in their pockets. This has created a scheme by which governments will provide tax relief in … Read More