Since when did bookkeeping get so complicated?

CRA has rules about when you can't turn a blind eye... and if you are keeping records, this should be fair warning...      click here: Civil Penalties IC 01

I'd love to find that court case I read a few years ago now, where the judge is berating the husband because the husband is blaming his wife for not keeping the business records properly. If anyone knows which case that is, I'd love to have the name/date or if you can find it in www.canlii.org send me the link @ eileen@taxdetective.ca

It used to be that you could just hire anyone who knew keyboarding, hand them a pile of paper and say, here, enter these into the books.  You could provide a few instructions about what category to use, and there would only be a few categories.  Life was pretty simple. Those days are gone.  Every time I turn around, on my TaxDetective forum for members of www.ipbc.ca, a member wants to know how to deal with something new and different.  Last week it was Holdbacks, this week it's Banked Over-Time. Or it's coupons, gift certificates, discount codes... and always, there's the law, not just tax, all the laws.

Today's bookkeeper has to be pretty sophisticated and street wise. They almost need a law degree to record transactions because they have to interpret transactions in light of laws like Income Tax, Payroll, Trusts, Estates, the Public Trustee Act, Excise Tax, WorkSafe, Employment Standards, Import/Export rules plus they have to contend with accounting rules set out in the CICA Handbook.

What's cool is that today, most of those laws are online. More and more of them are available at www.canlii.org and if you haven't been there recently, review the laws and read some court cases, from various courts.

Record keeping for income taxes can at times be the subject of court cases, at the Tax Court level, and sometimes they go to Appeals and on to the Supreme Court. 

This case I can't find, the one with the husband who hired his wife, who knew nothing about keeping records and then blamed her in a court in this land. The judge didn't buy it.  He told that owner/manager to hire appropriately qualified persons to handle the record keeping and told him that it wasn't the wife's fault and that it was totally inappropriate of him to require his wife to provide this service. I wonder how the wife fared after the trial. I often think of her and wonder.

Today's bookkeeper is very special. Many bookkeepers have studied accounting, and tax, and are often just a few courses shy of a designation when life gets in the way and they start a business instead of completing their designation.

If you hire a bookkeeper, make sure you treat them well! They deserve your respect, support and admiration. It isn't easy keeping it all straight and on the up and up.