taxdetective-Sandusky-Register

The best offense is defense.
If you keep perfect records, they'll take a quick look and leave. 

1. Keep your records current, use full accrual method, not just adjustments at year end.
2. Complete all compliance by the deadlines and reconcile the account balance with what you're filing, don't just blindly file based on a report without cross checking to see what the amount owing is and that it agrees to what you are filing.
3. Reconcile all of your accounts and compliance reporting weekly/monthly/quarterly, don't wait until year end to reconcile.
4. Requirement documentation that includes business reason, and where meals, names, and store your purchases in alpha order, reconcile your payables, record all purchases through payables, never directly from the bank or credit card statements. Exception, bank charges with no GST/HST
5. Store your employee information by employee and have contracts and TD1's for each employee in a permanent file.
6. Store your sales electronically and have them available, or store in date order.
7. Store your detailed deposit information with all of your account statements, and document every deposit on those statements as to its source, including gifts and transfers.
8. Documenting deposits and transfers is as important as documenting your proof of payment.
9. Include shareholder/owner/managers in payroll, don't accept the method of let's just take draws and do an annual adjustment.
10. Monitor for debit balances in the shareholder loan account and rectify immediately or risk assessment under S. 80.4 imputed interest on debit balances. 

Here are the recommendations of the commission chaired by Don Drummond with 362 recommendations how how to reduce spending and eliminate deficit:
http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_CA/ca/services/tax/tax-publications/daeabb14286a5310VgnVCM2000001b56f00aRCRD.htm

Compare that to the provincial budget for BC released this week. (see prior post today)

To enahnce the size when you open the link, use your Ctrl and + key to increase the font so you can read it comfortably..

They've matched federal credits for children's fitness and arts...
(...it won't cost very much because it's a small credit with big optics)

and removed the limit for medical expenses on Line 331 (this was $10,000 limit, and it's been removed to match the federal medical tax credit for claims for dependent medical costs for over 18 (under 18 is included on Line 330)

What will cost is a BC Seniors' Home Reno tax credit, extending the BC Training tax credit to 2014,

and increases to BC Medical premiums of 4% will hurt employers pocket books, unless they stop paying those premiums and pass the cost directly to you.  Currently many employers pay this and you, the employee, pays the tax on the benefit.

What's enhanced is the Premium Assistance, so check if you qualify for premium assistance, even partially... here's the link:

http://www.health.gov.bc.ca/msp/infoben/premium.html

and why on earth would they be exempting jet fuel for international flights? Motivators?
Are the airlines in trouble? or are we hoping to keep costs down to encourage tourism?

My friend Esther writes a good synopsis of considerations about software for accounting for investments

http://accountant.intuit.com/practice_resources/articles/accounting/article.aspx?file=efk_QBInvestments-1

I am available for individual consults on starting up a Quicken file to track your portfolio. 

If you aren't aware of the stop loss and superficial loss rules for identical property holdings in registered and unregistered accounts, it may be time to research the investment accounting requirements for calculation of adjusted cost base required by the Income Tax Act.

Here's some information about the services I provide, and a link to some articles Canadian MoneySaver published that I wrote about investment accounting:

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

Thanks to Faber LLP from Edmonton AB for pointing out that the payment button for the series of five working paper videos was broken!

Here's the link to purchase the series at a substantial savings;

http://www.taxdetective.ca/catalog/item/6427752/9153145.htm

This is the link to purchase the Microsoft OneNote sample starter notebook discussed in the series:

http://www.taxdetective.ca/catalog/item/6427752/9166280.htm

In case you missed this series, and even if you attended, I forgot to mention that in QuickBooks, it's possible to choose to "Print to OneNote"? What's so cool about that?

In Microsoft OneNote, you can use the Paint features to create circles, arrows, colors, sticky notes, marking up your report before sending it on, by email that page directly from OneNote?

If you haven't experimented with OneNote yet, I encourage you to give it a trial run. Many of the participants on the five part series were totally enchanted with the idea of using this program to create paperless, in the cloud, on the web, or shared over the network, working paper files, procedure manuals, and other collaborative documents.

Maybe is as good an answer as you'll get from me.. Maybe if you meet the criteria for claiming the arts credit, because tutoring is listed as an activity, but there are caveats about claiming. 

Best to check out the requirements for programs at this webpage.

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/tpcs/ncm-tx/rtrn/cmpltng/ddctns/lns360-390/370/menu-eng.html

And don't get your knickers in a knot if you can't claim it, because it's only $75 (15% federal tax rate for credits x $500)

Oh yes, if you're a parent with a child with a disability, it could be as much as $150 (15% federal tax rate for credits x $500 plus a $500 bonus if you spent anywhere from $100 to $500).

Ok kiddies, math camp is in your future....