Fees for services reporting by business

If you are in business, self-employed, corporate, partnership, or you manage a trust, and you hire consultants, paying 'fees for services', you'll want to be watching the new reporting requirements on the re-designed T4A form with more than just a little interest. 

Your business could be the recipient of T4A's that you'll need to reconcile with your income to ensure that you are reporting what's been claimed on the slips too. 

I can see it's only a matter of time before CRA may require you to provide a listing of your sales by customer on a desk audit basis, to verify that you've included these amounts in your income.

There's a comment in the 2011 Federal Budget about Box 48 and how that box is to be used which leads one to believe that if you're in business, and you, for example, hire a coach, or a computer technical person who works for themselves, and invoices you, that you're going to have to provide a T4A. 

Now it doesn't say if this is on a cash or an accrual basis, but it's definitely there.  It does specifically say this won't be when you hire someone personally, and they use a hairdresser to do your hair as an example.

No idea if they intend to enforce it for 2011 as What's new for payroll stresses they are undertaking a review of what should be included in this new Box 48 and currently there are no penalties for not complying.