taxdetective-Sandusky-Register

I believe it's important to reflect on where we've been...

Every so often, usually about this time of year, I ponder the thresholds and rates as well as the maximum contributions for CPP and EI and wonder how many Canadians actually contribute the maximum for CPP.

I'm sure someone knows the statistics on that?

EI premiums and maximums:
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/pyrll/clcltng/ei/cnt-chrt-pf-eng.html

CPP premiums and maximums:
http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/bsnss/tpcs/pyrll/clcltng/cpp-rpc/cnt-chrt-pf-eng.html

Note to self-employed...

If you are self-employed and earn $51,100 in 2013, you'll be required to remit $4,712.40 for CPP contributions in 2012, up $99 from 2012.



 

Re-posting this blog as a reminder to complete Box 85 to save time and money!

http://taxdetective.blogspot.ca/2012/06/box-85-on-t4-should-be-mandatory-and.html

There's a reference to articles written for Intuit ProAdvisor Newsletter in the working paper series (five hours on reporting and reconciliation for year ends)

Here's a link to lots more resources if you're at the stage of watching the 5 part working paper series and if not, make this page a favorite to visit later when you get there.

http://www.taxdetective.ca/working_papers_ipbc_2012.html

If you have no idea what the bundle is all about, over the past 2 years, I've created and produced a series of videos to learn how to master QuickBooks and augmented it with the working paper series, plus written and produced other videos and products to aid in accounting for your business.

These products were written for bookkeepers and accountants, or small business owners who want organize their paperwork from the current chaotic mess that it is today.

Visit www.taxdetective.ca to shop.

Finance released their rates for 2013 for vehicles recently:

http://www.fin.gc.ca/n12/12-178-eng.asp

In my TaxLinks Pro Portal on vehicle rules because there are different rules for claiming expenses by employees, shareholders and self-employed persons, combined with different rules for different vehicles, this makes for a real mess of rules!

If you aren't sure about which rules apply to your situation, this page may provide some clarity, or scare you enough to seek professional help:

www.taxdetective.ca/vehicles.html

If a subscription to TaxLinks Pro Portal interests you, that's where I post my research and topical links so I can find them again. I sell a subscription that I've chosen to renew each October 1. It's $30, no matter when you sign up, and it's a great way to enhance your tax reading for PD points if you're a CGA looking for non verifiable hours. 

...2.5 days to go to accumulate enough points for 2012...

www.taxdetective.ca/shop.html

If you're in business for yourself, there are reconciliations, and not just bank reconciliations!

If you're re-assessed for prior period GST/HST, or income tax, or PST, it's necessary to go back and reconcile those periods, and to make adjustments to those years expenses or income depending on the adjustments required by the assessing agency, be it CRA or Provincial tax auditors, or WCB for that matter.

Those adjustments may affect the income for that period. That may require a tax adjustment for that period as well.

There's a free spreadsheet you can download from my website to help with reconciliation between what was recorded by the agency (what you filed, or what they adjusted it to) and what's on your books.

Until they agree, you aren't finished accounting. I know this is time consuming and you probably can't believe you can't just ignore this step, but hey, there's a reason we went to school for years at night, and why we get paid for our expertise.

Reconcile it yourself, hire a bookkeeper to do the reconciliation and insist they do it, or your accountant will need to figure it out when you bring in your books.

Here's the free spreadsheet:

http://www.taxdetective.ca/catalog/item/8328953/8674760.htm

To obtain news like this directly from the Employer's Advisers in BC contact the PG office 1-888-608-8882 or email mkilcul1@eao-bc.org to request the newsletter if you're an employer or have clients who are employers.

For more information on how employers' advisers assist employers with WCB issues check out
http://www.labour.gov.bc.ca/eao/

Purchasers of the "bundle" of 44 products produced between March 2011 and October 2012 are entitled to a free hour workshop on best practices for using QuickBooks.

Today's session touched on something I'd never thought to include which is how to report without cents!

Great questions, and we covered some really fun stuff about construction renovations today.  Next session is January 7th 2013 at 11:30 am PST.

If you purchase the bundle before January 5th, you'll be invited to attend when you purchase.

If you purchased in the past and want to attend, let me know and I'll send you an invitation.

www.taxdetective.ca/bundle.html

For last nights workshop participants at the CGA Fraser Valley Computer User Group...some follow up notes:

Find the wording for the qualified medical practitioner (could be mental or physical infirmity) in the Family Caregiver Amount link

I've posted about infirmity a few times in the past year and each link has different wording and information that may strike a chord or provide the language you need to ask a QP to write a letter certifying infirmity:

http://taxdetective.blogspot.ca/2012/02/what-does-infirm-mean.html
http://taxdetective.blogspot.ca/2011/10/beat-rush-certify-infirmity-for-2011.html
http://taxdetective.blogspot.ca/2011/12/its-that-time-complete-your-td1-for.html

This link takes you to Examples of impairments for those videos with Gumby I talked about, remember that disability isn't infirmity... but this will help with the definitions of disability.

Click on the Examples, and then click on each type, and a video will come up,
for example, click on Walking or Dressing... and each of the 8 examples has a video

These are a great tool for you to use with families or their doctors, as the videos are cute, short, and pack a powerful message:

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/sgmnts/dsblts/qlfd-prcts/menu-eng.html

I wish you all a Merry Christmas!

CGA's if you're not sure you have enough points for 2012, or you're planning your PD for next year, consider purchasing my bundle of products for only $290.00.  There's a link to purchase the mastering QuickBooks software bundle, go direct to www.taxdetective.ca/bundle.html

There are 44 items, videos, spreadsheets, sample data files, etc. included in this bundle. Basically it's everything I've recorded from March 2011 to October 2012 for IPBC webinars for bookkeepers. Then, for free, you can also download sample data files from my website that were created while recording the webinars.

People tell me they are now watching the video for the third time, because they are so content rich. They have QuickBooks open on one monitor, and the video on another, or on a laptop beside where they are working, so they can pause and re-wind and work through what I'm showing them with QuickBooks open and the same file I"m showing on the video open so they can poke around and explore the forms, registers, reports, etc. to see for themselves how it works. They tell me they are gaining confidence, and one guy reported he passed the Certified ProAdvisor exam with 83.33% on the first try after watching the ten videos.

Last night the crew at the CGA Fraser Valley Computer User Group got a kick out of what one anonymous customer had to say about how these videos had affected him...

"I've watched other videos, read a few books, about QuickBooks, but yours are totally different. After watching yours, I feel that I am now controlling QuickBooks...before that I was controlled by QuickBooks...I am free now. I am the master, not him" 

I wanted to know why QuickBooks is a him and not a her...so I asked my husband. He says it's because machines are often considered to be feminine and the software that controls them is masculine. What do you think?

With 20 hours on Mastering QuickBooks, another 5 hours on Working Papers using QuickBooks report writer and a plethora of other self-study topics like Units of Measure, Time and Billing, Adjusting Time & Billing, you'll be positioned to claim 30 or more hours of non verifiable PD.

But there's something else that could provide you with even more hours, there's a link to my TaxLinks Pro Portal, for hundreds of hours of reading on topical links by subject. For example, vehicles, CCA, home office, personal services business... those are just a few of my research projects for writing articles where I've kept the links to my research. My computer tech guy suggested I should bundle those links and sell them as a valuable product in it's own right. Repeat customers tell me they love those links.

Order the DVD for an extra $20 if you don't have about an hour to download all 44 products. I'm told the 2 hour videos in the 10 part series take about 7 minutes each with a high speed download. And someone introduced me to www.speedbit.com yesterday, so maybe it will be even faster with this free tool. (no guarantees, and please read the caveats before loading free software)

Here's what it says on the CGA BC website about what qualifies as non verifiable hours:

Q: What types of activities qualify as non-verifiable technical reading hours?
A: The following types of activities can be claimed under non-verifiable hours:

• Self-study or technical reading of published materials relevant to your development as an accountant or related to your industry
• Reading Outlook magazine or CGA-Canada Magazine
• Technical research and reading that may be required of you for your job
• DVD, CD, or audiocassette study and self-study courses that do not provide a certificate of completion or assessment process

When submitting a claim for a non-verifiable technical reading activity, include a brief description of the activity, titles of publications and hours spent.

I received this email this morning and asked TJ if I could share this with you.

 

Notes:
Just today someone else called me and told me that I've completely changed how they do books.  They used to panic when they got a pile of receipts from a client.  They didn't know where to start.  My videos helped them to overcome that fear with a plan for how to tackle a pile of paper. Isn't that cool?


BTW, if you didn't know about me and my videos, you'll find more information here:

In 1986, in London Drugs computer department, Ladner store, on one of those carousels, I met Quicken software. On the front cover of the box, I was promised this software would help me reconcile my bank account. There was nothing else out there that reconciled your bank. I was hooked. Still am and still download and reconcile my accounts at least once a week.

Why was I so enamored? I'd spent about a year, in 1983, manually reconciling the bank accounts of Century 21, the Canadian franchise company for the first five years of it's existence. It would take me a whole day, sometimes two, to reconcile one month's cheques and deposits. The stack of cheques alone was 8 inches tall, for one month. I was looking for how come the general ledger was out of balance before we computerized everything. The books were still manual at that point.

In 1986, my first client in my accounting practice had investments, so I opened the investment module and started entering transactions to figure out the gains and losses. Ran smack in to stopped and superficial losses.

Over the years, as each new client came for a visit, I would open a Quicken file, and record in it their accounts, their assets, their debts, and produce a draft of their net worth. Every so often a client would call, ecstatic because their banker had high praise for how organized they were because they knew what they owned and owed. It happened again, just last month.

My motivation wasn't the same as my clients. I wanted to make sure I caught all of the taxable transactions and sometimes that included proceeds for other assets, sometimes at a gain, and it also caught when they inherited, and co-mingled the inheritances with a spouse, and tried to split the resulting income. It helped me to determine whether there was a gain or a stopped loss when an investment disappeared off the broker statement, and re-appeared on the RSP or TFSA statement, but the funds went somewhere else. Why? Because the T5008 doesn't record deemed dispositions of investments to your RSP and there very well could be a capital gain that resulted.
It helped me when they called, asking me what they should do if ... because we could easily take a copy and do a what-if scenario, using Quicken and the tax software to calculate the cash flow and the tax consequences of their proposed actions.

How do you remember what everyone owns and owes? How do you quickly get up to speed, remembering the nuances of each client's financial situation when they call asking for your assistance? For me, this software has been an enormous help.

I haven't kept track of how much I've made from using Quicken, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was more than from QuickBooks. On a consistent basis, over 27 years, I have an electronic trail of investments, accounts, assets, liabilities for each client. Sometimes they've asked for a copy so they could download their transactions and start to keep a more accurate record of their day to day spending, but mostly, it's just been an annual update, taking the pulse if you will for how are they doing. I remember times when we've stopped to ponder and celebrate reaching a milestone, a net worth of 500,000 or one or two million. I remember splitting apart assets for a separation, and merging them for a second marriage. Quicken provided a convenient method of keeping track.

Now maybe you find that too invasive, but the clients I have value that I care enough to keep track. That's part of why they hire me. They want my advice and they know that I have a system of keeping track so that when they asked a question, I already had the background. I had already calculated their ACB (see my post on 27 reasons to calculate ACB if you haven't already read that, or visit it again for a refresher)...

I hope you'll consider attending the January series. I know it's a shock that it isn't free, but, I guarantee that if you adopt Quicken as a tool in your arsenal of record keeping tools, you'll make money using Quicken in your practice. You'll make much more than the cost of this workshop and you'll have peace of mind knowing you aren't forgetting something you should know about your client's financial position if you prepare their taxes.

If you sign up before December 31 for all four sessions, you'll receive the recordings free of charge after the last session.

The Income Tax Act and the Excise Tax Act (that's where GST/HST is found) are not the same. They may cross reference each other though.

In the case of reasonability of an allowance this is an interesting question for which I don't have the answer yet.

Is 40 cents a reasonable km reimbursement? In a world where 52 cents is the rate posted by CRA, is 40 cents too low?

Here's the GST/HST Policy #113 R with some background on how GST/HST views reimbursements that are considered taxable and tax free

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pub/gl/p-113r/p-113r-e.html

Let me know what you think.  Have you done the math with your own vehicle?  What is it costing you to run a normal vehicle? Not a huge monster truck, we know those cost more, just because there's more rubber on the road

A regular vehicle. What's it costing you per km? And where are you in Canada?