Right now, Canadians are rushing to file their personal income tax returns on time. At Mew and Company, we are gearing up to process all of the documentation needed to file complete and accurate returns by April 30, 2015. Although we have been preparing personal tax returns for many years, it feels like every year, there are more documents to request and process than the previous year. A significant reason for this is perhaps that my clients’ lives have become more complicated from a tax ... Read More
Canada’s Anti-Spam Law: Is Your Vancouver Small Business Ready?
This law comes into effect July 1 – less than three weeks away!
What is “Spam”?
Essentially, it’s unsolicited electronic mail and/or communications. That “junk” folder in your inbox, you know, the one you never open? It’s likely full of spam. At the core, “spam” is about electronic commerce regulation, which means that it should be important to virtually every small business in Canada. The latest Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) makes three significant changes to the way you ... Read MoreCanadian Small Business Owners and CPP – What is the Deal?
For business owners in British Columbia, the trend of remunerating shareholders with dividends instead of salaries and/or management bonuses has been going on for years. The low corporate tax rate of 13.5% on the first $500,000 of corporate profits in conjunction with total CPP premiums of $4,712 on the first $51,100 of salary paid to each shareholder/manager created a strong tax planning argument to take dividends instead of salary. Currently, with discussion in Ottawa to further expand the ... Read More
Getting the Most Out of Your Professional Tax Advisor
One of the first questions I ask a new prospective client is “Why do you wish to switch tax advisors?” The most common complaint is that there is a lack of proactive tax planning from the current advisor. The second common complaint is late filing penalties and interest fees. More specifically, the taxpayer often complains that the current tax advisor has been unresponsive to a tax planning request or has been too busy to make the client a priority. After being in practice for many years now, I ... Read More
Tax Tips for Vancouver Female Small Business Owners – Creating a Strong Brand is Vital to Success
I am a Chartered Accountant at Mew & Company - I have had my own accounting firm located in Downtown Vancouver for almost 15 years now. I was recently inspired by a conversation I had with a new client which I want to share with all the women business owners in Vancouver, BC. My new client is an energetic and enterprising entrepreneur. Her business has been expanding in a very challenging industry. Without being prompted by me, her reasoning for the continual expansion was to successfully ... Read More
Vancouver Tax Tips: Business Expenses With Best ROI
Pre-requisite Expenditures For Business Success!
Professional Vancouver Chartered Accountants have the privilege of seeing the detailed financial information of many profitable and sometimes not so profitable businesses. First and foremost, in order to be profitable, you need to be in an industry whose products and services are in demand. For example, the best TV repair guy cannot survive today regardless of the strength of his marketing efforts. Competition, however, is high in ... Read MoreFeeling tax fatigue? Mew and Company Chartered Accountants can help!
“The difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” –Will Rogers. Will Rogers hit the right chord with his quote. All taxpayers will agree that there is nothing worse than continuously paying an amount of earnings and hard-earned income as taxes to the government, without ever seeing the end of it. The percentage constantly increases, as the burden of rectifying ongoing economic strife is laid increasingly on the common man. As if that wasn't ... Read More
Vancouver Small Business Owners – To Incorporate or Not?
Read Before Incorporating For Small Business Owners in Vancouver, BC I often have friends and neighbours telling me how well their business is doing and that they want to incorporate their Vancouver-based business. It appears that a lot of business owners have this notion that as a business takes off, incorporating is a necessity. Business owners specifically do not know why they should incorporate, they just believe that is what other businesses have done in the past. Before they take the ... Read More
Profitability Analyses for B.C. Businesses According to a Chartered Accountant
One of my favorite parts of my university studies in the field of accounting was cost analysis and break-even analysis. When a B.C. business has been operating for a number of years and has been profitable, tax planning is always a priority and I am often not asked to improve the business. However, when a new client is a business that lacks profitability but still operating, tax planning is not the main priority. Instead, the focus shifts to determining if the business can ever be profitable, ... Read More
Filing Canadian Corporate Tax and HST Returns on Time
Just File Your Canadian Tax Return on Time! During the past year, I have noticed that Canadian Revenue Agency (CRA) is putting more pressure on Canadian corporations to file their corporate tax and HST returns on time. The tactics being used by CRA include constant reminder notices being sent soon after the filing deadline has passed as well as withholding HST and/or corporate tax refunds until all of the business' filings are current. As a Vancouver chartered accountant, I don’t mind the ... Read More
